The Intricacies of the Business
by jelispar
Summary: The X-Men are under new leadership and are trying to work their way through a situation none of them expected to have to face. Features: Gambit, Wolverine, Storm, Rogue, and a plethora more including some original characters.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: So this is sort of an experiment/sanity retention experiment. Word of advice: Graduate school will become your life if you let it. If you like it, do please review because if I don't get a lot of feedback on this I'm probably going to kill it. Don't expect a lot of quick updates...see the words immediately above. The back story is going to sort of work it's way out through the current story, it's going to be a ride, so hold on. Typical disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue, no money, again see above! Enjoy.

* * *

Somehow this was pay back. He wasn't sure for what, but he had to have done something to deserve this. He eyed the "bartender" leaning smugly against the row of dirty bottles lining shelves that held a pathetic selection of liquor, then scanned the grimy fridge stocked with what he assumed to be bottles of beer behind the filthy glass. Taking his chances Logan nodded at the unmarked tap - the only tap. "Three fifty," the bartender grunted and slid him the glass. It smelled like piss. Shrugging Logan slapped three seventy five on the counter. It tasted like piss. He debated taking back the quarter. Fury was going to pay for being late, and it would cost more than three seventy five. He tipped his worn cowboy hat up to get a better view of the customers brave enough to frequent this establishment. A couple hookers, getting an early start on numbing down for the night, sat clustered at the other end of the bar. The blonde had given up on giving him friendly looks about ten minutes ago. Either she decided he wasn't interested, or she was too far gone at this point to notice him anymore. Logan assumed their frequent bathroom trips had mostly consisted of taking turns doing lines on the bathroom sink. Behind him were two kids probably not old enough to drink, but young and stupid enough to think they were cool by doing it anyway. They were too busy trying to look like thugs to anybody passing by to have done more than glance at the 'old dude in the stupid hat' before going back to pretending to be bad ass. He wondered if they could really handle 'bad ass' if he picked a fight. He snorted into his piss water and looked back across the bar. And of course there was his friend the bartender, who noticed he was being stared at and merely grunted back in return. Yup, this had to be payback but at least he wasn't being watched. The closest possible trouble was NYC's rookie gang violence unit which was still two blocks away. It was the perfect place for a meeting, but Fury was late.

Another ten minutes passed; long enough for Logan to wonder if he'd have been safer with a bottle instead of the tap and offer a silent thanks to the powers that be for his healing factor. Only then, when he'd almost given up, did he hear the door on his left swing open and somebody stumble inside. Half an hour late, but at least he showed. "Frank!" Fury shouted and half ran, half fell towards him at the bar "There y'are, you sorry bashtud. I tol you were goin t'Effie's Pub, not Larry'sh. I been lookin' fer you eveywhere." Fury slapped him on the shoulder and held his hand there. Logan could feel the jump drive pressed into his skin and grabbed it as he pulled Fury's hand away, sliding it up his sleeve.

"Been lookin' in the bottom of every glass from here to there?" Logan barked. "You said Larry's and I've been waiting here for the past forty minutes you drunk shit." Logan grabbed him by the sleeve, only slightly rougher than necessary. He was almost sorry that he wouldn't have a chance to force Fury to drink the same sewer rat piss he'd been nursing all along. Without looking at anybody Logan pushed Fury in front of him until they were out of the bar, down the block and in an alleyway where they wouldn't be seen. Fury had spent the walk alternating between protesting drunkenly and moaning that he was going to puke. He made a very convincing drunk, Logan noted. Which made it that much easier to shove him around while they walked to the rendezvous point Fury had predetermined with the Cajun. Nobody questioned a drunk or his handler. Finally the stench of garbage let Logan know they were near the alley and with a quick shove Fury went sprawling face first down the back street and onto the dirty pavement.

"You had to pick the filthiest bar to take me to didn't you?" Logan asked, spitting on the sidewalk to try and erase the taste from his mouth.

"Seemed your type of place," Fury chuckled. Slowly, he picked himself up and dusted off his pants, miraculously sober. He shook his head, his face turning deadly serious. "You have your information, you don't want to know what I had to go through to get that," Fury stated, pointing at Logan's chest pocket where he'd seen him slip the drive. "S.H.I.E.L.D. is not going to get involved," Logan nodded, he had expected that much. "I'm serious, Wolverine." Fury said, getting close enough Logan could almost taste his breath. "From this point forward this meeting never happened. I refuse to get my team involved in this, let it be on your head." And with that he turned and vanished back out onto the dark street, once again weaving his way uncertainly through the crowd like a master performer.

Odd, Logan thought, waiting a few more minutes before exiting the alley himself. Normally S.H.I.E.L.D. refused to get involved. When it came to the X-Men and their agenda Fury simply turned a blind eye...no pun intended. That was, of course, when he wasn't hell bent on making the lives of his favorite "mutant terrorists" miserable. But he was never so...vehement about it. Fury's disavowal of their interactions was always something assumed on the part of both parties. Why was Fury suddenly so insistent on it?

Time would tell as Logan made his way up the sidewalks, through the occasional throngs of people to where he had left his bike. Climbing on he revved the soft tail to life once, twice, then waited. An answering hum came to him from down the block within seconds and he kicked the throttle violently to start the ride home, stilling mulling events over. He took the corners easy, knowing that any second the Cajun would be coming up past him to take the lead and monitor the way. Make sure they weren't being followed. Soon enough the flashy R1200RT, the Cajun's new BMW toy, flew by with him bent low over the tank. Logan grunted, he'd never be caught dead on the thing, but it did the trick-caught attention. Gambit was the bait for anybody wondering what an X-Man might be doing in the city. While Logan was meeting with Fury, Gambit had been having a not so subtle dinner with Emma Frost, not that anything Emma did could be mistaken for subtle, and was now heading home on his not so subtle motorcycle.

Logan would take the direct route home, turning off at the next exit and heading straight back to the mansion. Gambit would meet him back in the garage about twenty minutes later if he didn't have anybody to shake off in the winding back streets of Westchester. And if he did...well Logan figured he would probably enjoy the excitement. Cajun could take care of himself, Logan would just wait longer. He hated nights like tonight and missions like this, they always amounted to a lot of hanging around waiting for something and hoping it didn't happen.

Sooner than he expected the mansion loomed ahead and he was punching his access code in at the gate. He pulled slowly into the main garage, ground level, and parked his bike back in its own designated spot. Then he waited, and hoped he wasn't missing out on a good time.

* * *

Freedom was the only thing Gambit could think of, flying around corners in the city making his way back to the highway and home. It was so nice to be free. It would be so nice not to go back. He flew past Logan and could feel the feral smirk burning a hole through the back of his jacket, his _leather_ jacket. This was no bike to be riding in his signature duster. This was the first time in the four months since he'd purchased the bike that he'd actually been able to take it out and ride. Leadership, he thought, can do awful things to a man. Not that it was all bad. Being able to make the rules was a nice perk; being able to dictate strategy rather than just falling in line like a soldier. But all the paperwork, and the discipline, and the complaints were building up more every day and it soon felt like he was going to drown in them. Thieves didn't act this way. Even with all the subterfuge and backstabbing going on within the guild, leading the New Orleans Thieves Guild had been easy compared to this. Of course, he thought glumly, after Katrina they would have followed anybody who could promise them a home not filled with water and floating bodies. He shook himself out of those memories, he had to get home. Nobody had followed him off the exit and there was nobody on the road except himself. It was time to go home-and get back to work.

Gambit pulled in slowly and let the bike come to a complete stop before lowering his feet off the pegs. A balancing act only a trained thief could pull off and he knew it. Logan just grunted; cigar already clenched in his teeth though he knew better than to light it in the garage. Gambit didn't allow tobacco smoke, even his own, near any of his toys-it ruined the paint. "Having fun?" Logan asked while Gambit quickly wiped down the wheels before calling it a night.

"Eh," he shrugged. "Ain' nobody out tonight, if anyone was watchin' they didn't figure it'd be worth seein' what I was up to."

"What _you_ were up to?" Logan asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"Well, of course. Out of de two of us you have to admit, I'm de much more interestin' party."

"My ass, Cajun."

Gambit laughed, throwing his dirty rag in the general direction of a collection bin and missing. "Come on Wolverine. Y'can' tell me dat dere are days you don't miss it. De adrenaline, de excitement, de..."

"Pinch?" Logan asked, jabbing Gambit in the ribs jokingly, leaning against his own prize bike.

"Was gon' say de _chase_, _mon ami_." Logan shrugged. "But yah, de pinch too." He flashed a grin.

Logan snorted, "You gonna let the team know what we were up to tonight or wait till the mornin'?"

"Translation: can I go smoke dis t'ing," Gambit laughed, flicking the tip of the cigar before turning and walking toward the mansion entrance door. "Or," he continued with his back turned to Logan, "you gonna make me sit in meetin's all night till I'm bout ready t'strangle somebody?"

"Somethin' like that." Logan shrugged, grinning. It was no secret he preferred Gambit's laid back leadership methods to Cyclops old regime. And while he missed the ole one eye, sometimes change, however unexpected, could be a good thing.

"Much as I'd love to make you suffer, mon ami." Gambit laughed, punching in the last of the security code and sliding through the open door. "Dat means I gotta suffer too. An' I ain' feelin' quite so masochistic tonight." He held his hand out and Logan deposited the USB stick.

"Fury didn't seem too eager to hand that thing over, Cajun." Gambit gave him a barely readable look almost confirming what Logan feared might be on that stick.

"Course not, S.H.I.E.L.D. don' like when stuff goes on dat dey can' handle demselves. Even less handin' it over to de enemy."

"You think we're ready ta tango with somethin' even S.H.I.E.L.D. seemed scared to touch?" The 'we' implied the team, and Gambit knew it. Much as he had faith in many of the individual members, Logan felt the same as he did when it came to a group situation, especially including some of the 'newbies' that had entered the ranks.

"S.H.I.E.L.D. ain' scared of nothin' Wolverine. Dey gov'ment, wit all de fine beaurocratic crap dat comes with it. Somethin' like dis, if it's what I t'ink it is, would end up wrapped up in red tape for months."

"They red tape it cuz it means too many people are gonna die, ya know."

Gambit laughed, "Dere ain' no people far as S.H.I.E.L.D. concerned, dere's 'an unacceptable percentage of foreseen loss associated with the project.' You worked wit' gov'ment Logan. You know dat."

Logan shrugged and the shadow of a grin graced his face. "So question is, is this Fury's way of getting rid o' us? Or is it a faster means to an end."

Gambit let the question hang in the air for a second, pondering. "Yes." Logan snickered at the response, but it was true. "G'night Logan. Don' stay up too late, we do have to do dis whole meetin' t'ing tomorrow."

A grunt was as much of an answer as he was going to get, and he knew it. Logan was a big boy; he could take care of himself. More, he could face the consequences when he didn't. Right now Remy found himself more concerned with what he finally held in his hand or at least what he hoped it was-answers. Silently he made his way toward the elevator, declining the effort of taking the stairs for once. As soon as the door opened he regretted it. "So how's Emma?" The southern drawl was like finger nails down a chalkboard at midnight. It was an unpleasant mixture of jealousy, anger and spite that never failed to make him feel slightly nauseated.

"Been takin' yo mother's lessons a little too serious," Gambit replied and stepped into the elevator. It was too late to turn back and do anything but. The comment had been a low blow too, but so was waiting up and stalking him. He figured that made them even.

"You are avoidin' my question."

His shoulders tensed and he kept his back to her. In a lot of ways she was exactly like his ex-wife, assassin trained, strong willed, and unwilling to give him the slightest shred of trust. "_Magnifique_."

It was the wrong thing to say and he knew it. "Well," she huffed as the elevator finally opened its doors on the third floor. "Ain' that just darlin'?"

It wasn't a question. "Rogue," he sighed and finally turned to face her. "I ain' gon do dis t'night. You'll get y'answers wit de rest of de team in de mornin'." He let a bit of a smirk cross his face and light the corner of his eyes. "Ain' no dinner wit de White Queen ever gon be considered a pleasure." He waited a second for the spark of realization to settle in her eyes. "An' you _know_ dat. You wanna talk, _chere_, we'll talk after we both get a bit a shut eye."

She was much prettier, Remy thought, when he couldn't see her plotting his death behind those green eyes. "Business?" He shrugged. "Mission?" She wouldn't stop if he didn't put his foot down, and at this point they were already half way to his room. He hadn't even realized they'd been walking, damn he was tired.

"Morning." He stated firmly, turning and pointing back down toward the other end of the hall-toward her room. "Bed."

"Sure swamprat, just go an' pull rank like that." But she went, and she stopped questioning. And even more importantly, at least as far as Remy was concerned, the chip was no longer balancing precariously on her shoulder. She'd be much easier to deal with in the morning.

He entered his room, closed the door and shot one look of longing toward his bed before heading straight to his computer. The one thing he would thank Charles for until his dying day was that computer. Granted, there was nothing Cerebro could do for him that Remy wasn't perfectly capable of doing himself or paying somebody to do for him, but Cerebro could get it done so much faster and infinitely cheaper. Speed was the name of the game now.

Gambit had changed the X-Men in the months since he had taken over leadership. Though still hiding behind the guise of a school, no students roamed these halls any longer. It was too dangerous for kids; they made easy hostages. Instead the X-Men had transformed from a rag tag group of mutant freedom fighters to a self sufficient, highly trained, mercenary unit. After the death of Xavier Gambit had been one of the few to realize that it would only be a matter of time before Xavier's money would dry up. It had been time to start bringing some income back into the accounts. And, as a result of early planning, the X-Men had become one of the most highly sought after contracts in the country, if not the world. Even more importantly, because of Gambit's money management, they were poised in a position to be able to pick and choose their contracts at leisure and still do some of their own work and research on the side. Work and research like what Remy found himself doing at the moment.

"Load and display" Remy said out loud, prompting a screen to come to life on one of the walls and display the contents of the jump drive. It held three folders, all encrypted from the looks of it. From the size of it there was a decent amount of information to be had. "Cerebro, how long to decrypt files?"

"Processing...approximately four hours. Would you like to begin decryption Gambit?"

Four hours of sleep didn't sound too bad, especially after a look at the clock. It was twelve thirty-ish. Sleep till four thirty, go over what he could for two hours, have breakfast with the team at six thirty, Danger Room session by seven thirty and team meeting at ten. "Please begin decrypting files, set alarm for four thirty AM."

"Complying."

That done Remy began to get ready and climb into his bed. It had taken over three weeks to convince Fury to hand over this data and he hoped it would answer more than a few of his questions. There had been too many reports of mutant kidnappings lately. Not just a typical mutant kid disappearing here or there, it was becoming epidemic. But more to the point, the kidnappees weren't being held indefinitely, they were being released a few days later with no recollection of the past 72 to 96 hours. It seemed, at least to Remy LeBeau, disturbingly...Sinister? That was of course, nothing more than a hunch but the whole situation left a familiar chill running down his back.

Then there were the rumors...bad rumors. Remy LeBeau hadn't gotten to be the undisputed King of Thieves by ignoring something seemingly insignificant like a rumor. Story was that China's law enforcement project of robotic surveillance "officers" was being unofficially run and organized by Bolivar Trask. Rumor also had Trask working out of Magneto's former mutant nation Genosha once more. Of course, paper had Trask sitting fat and pretty in a penthouse in London enjoying the monetary rewards of his program that the Geneva council had been kind enough to denounce as inhumane. However, they had also ruled that since Trask's wealth had been gained legitimately, with no direct ties to the Genosha project, his bank accounts were thus granted immunity in the financial settlement that had been agreed upon to rectify the 'situation'. Geneva always managed to surprise the mutant community at large with how extraordinarily outlandish their decisions were as far as what was wrong and what was 'legal'.

Worry about it later, sleep now, Remy thought, turning toward his pillow without bothering to undress. Four hours would come and go fairly quickly and there was still a lot to be done.

* * *

Logan took one last draw on the cigar he had lit seconds after walking onto the back patio. He had heard the person following him from the moment he walked through the rear foyer. Whether that person was aware of it or not, he wasn't sure. A year ago, perhaps two he would've let her get away with it or considered it part of the game. Now, with the type of business they were dealing with, games got a body dead real fast. "Late night for you 'Ro." He didn't bother turning to look at her. Odds were two to one she wouldn't mind the rebuke, his favor.

"And it is not exactly an early night for you either, Logan." From the change in the intensity of her scent he could tell she had moved closer. Probably to sit in one of the chaise lounges that decorated this section of the grounds. "What would cause you and Remy to be out so late before an early morning Danger Room session?"

Logan snorted. "Ya make it sound like we've never done it before."

"Indeed, but not since Cyclops left and Gambit took over. So was it business or pleasure?"

"Jealous?" Logan asked. He couldn't tell why but tonight he found himself itching for a fight, and unfortunately for Storm she had volunteered herself as an accessible and, given their recent history, easy target.

"Curious." Storm wasn't rising to the bait. "It did not seem either of you were gone long enough for it to be a night of recreation. Rogue seemed to believe you were both meeting with Emma. If that is the case I feel fairly comfortable guessing that some team business was being transacted. I only wonder what?"

She hit the nail too close to the head. Logan shrugged and turned to finally look at her. "Gambit needs to learn not to open his mouth if he don't want rumors being spread."

Storm echoed his shrug in response, her thin white t-shirt sliding off one shoulder in the process and tossed her hair over that same shoulder, exposing a small portion of skin. "I do not spread rumors Logan. You must have learned at least that much of me."

He shook his head. This conversation was now poised to travel one of two somewhat well worn paths, neither of which the Wolverine felt like exploring tonight. Either the conversation would get real ugly and real personal real fast, or one of them would be forced into admitting feelings that they had both long since abandoned. If it went the latter way Logan was pretty certain Storm wouldn't end up being the one spilling her guts to the moonlight. "Nice try kid, but I ain't sayin' a word till Gumbo gives the okay." A smile hovered at the edge of her lips and he tipped his hat to her slightly to acknowledge her small victory. He had needed to acquiesce to it being a work night in order to bow gracefully out of the conversation and she knew it. Suddenly Logan felt very tired. "Go to bed Storm, it's gonna be a long day tomorrow and even goddesses need to get some shut eye every now and again." He turned his back to her, taking a nice long drag to cool down nerves he didn't recall being fired up.

Now was his turn at victory. He had known the nickname would finally strike a cord in her. "Goddesses will go to bed when they wish." She rose into the air before him, the wind blowing her hair behind her in what Logan used to find an irresistible manner but now saw as nothing but a paltry special effect. "They do not follow the will of mere mortals. Especially mortals such as yourself." That said Storm let the wind take her away towards the south grounds and the gardens.

Logan shook his head and stomped out the remains of the cigar, losing his interest in it. What had at first been a friendship between the two had blossomed into a loving relationship at some point nine or ten months ago. Unfortunately just as blossoms eventually fade wither and die their relationship had as well, only about nine weeks in and their friendship had remained touchy and distant ever since. But the Wolverine wasn't quite ready to admit he was at fault for the problem and Storm was too stubborn in her own way to take blame either. Instead they were left in limbo. Logan growled. If there was anything he hated it was that feeling of uncertainty. The Wolverine existed in a world of clear cut black and white, the spectrum of gray had no place in his reality and he found it's presence disconcerting.

Looking up at the moon, Logan realized how late it truly was. Two a.m. was now fast approaching and he knew Gambit would hold true to his promise of an early morning. He turned and let himself back into the mansion, making his way back to his own suite of rooms. Sleep would come easy tonight.

* * *

Bishop watched as Wolverine made his way into the house before following Storm over towards the gardens. She sat calmly, humming to herself amongst the foliage of the surrounding rhododendrons. Tropical plants, Bishop knew, were her favorites. However, the climate of New York was too harsh for them to grow anywhere but the greenhouse. Bishop also knew Storm would never head to the greenhouse at night, her claustrophobia wouldn't allow it. Instead whenever she needed time to focus he could always count on finding her in this exact spot where she had a view of the mansion, a view of the lake, a view of the sky and a view of the earth. As she had told him, all things in balance helped her to balance herself. Quietly he sat next to her and waited. She would speak when she was ready and he would listen. He had left his weapon on the edge of this particular bed of flowers, knowing Storm would chastise him for bringing it with him. Weapons of war serve no purpose in a place built for peace she had told him once.

Finally after about forty minutes she turned and acknowledged him. "It is getting to be late Bishop. Perhaps it is also time for you to seek your bed?"

"Why do you let him speak to you that way?"

Storm shook her head and turned back toward the lake, her back facing him. "With Logan, I have learned, it is not a matter of letting him or not letting him _do_ anything. Logan will do as he wills and others must choose to either accept it or react."

Bishop looked away from her, towards the sky hoping to find some sense of calm for the emotions this conversation always invoked. "Why do you choose to accept it?"

"As I have told you before, Bishop. The question is not 'why do I accept it?' The question is why do I allow Logan's decisions to cause me to react." She turned back and took Bishops left hand in her own two. "As I have taught you, I alone am the master of myself. When I allow another's actions to dictate my own I have given up mastery of my own being. So when Logan decides to make a particularly rude or insensitive comment and I react without thought in the way he wishes I have granted him power over me."

Bishop stared at her for a long moment. Storm of all the X-Men had always confused him. She was, in and of herself, a heretical dichotomy: a pacifist who had and could kill without thought, a warrior who held life sacred above all else, a mutant who cared only for the wellbeing of the humans around her. "Yet when Gambit makes a joke that makes you laugh without thinking about it that is not surrendering oneself?"

Storm smiled. "It is, but it is giving over power to one who wishes you well. There is a difference."

He shook his head again, pulling his hand away. "I do not understand Storm. I was raised to react, not to give in."

"Simply because I strive not to react does not mean I am giving in."

Bishop shifted his weight so he was sitting next to her, both staring up at the sky. "It is late Storm, we both should be in bed."

"You are right, my friend, we should." Neither moved. Instead they sat the rest of the night staring at the sky in silence.

* * *

Four thirty came damn early, Gambit thought as the alarm he had asked Cerebro to set started going off. Slowly he stretched then rolled out of bed, reaching for his jeans and feeling nothing. Only then did he look down and notice that he had fallen asleep with his clothes still on. "_Merde_," he mumbled. His shoes were still where he had left them, kicking them off only minutes prior to climbing under the covers, so he grabbed those and put them back on before heading over to his computer desk.

In a way he missed his old room here at the mansion. It had been smaller and much easier to manage. Remy had never been one to collect stuff, his room had consisted of his bed, his desk, and his dresser for longer than he could remember. Longer, in fact, than he had been an X-Man. Now that he had taken over the team he had moved into Cyclop's old suite of rooms which had included a bedroom, bathroom, office, walk-in closet, and sitting room for meetings. He had yet to figure out what to do with the sitting room. The walk in closet had sat half empty for the past year. The office he had put a laptop in simply to be able to distinguish it from the sitting room (though he hadn't yet turned that laptop on). And the bedroom was simply a larger version of his former room. Storm had told him quite frankly that it was pathetic and had offered to help him do something with the space, but Remy just couldn't justify to himself filling the rooms up with junk just to be able to say they were full. Much as he loved his creature comforts, living on the run with next to nothing was too much of an ingrained way of life to change it now.

"Cerebro, is decryption finished?" He asked, punctuated with a yawn, as he reached the desk and dropped into the chair.

"Decryption complete."

"_Bien_, display files please." At his prompt the folder contents appeared on the monitor on his desk, sorted into nicely categorized fields. "Thank you Cerebro."

"You are welcome, Gambit."

Rogue always laughed at him when he thanked the computer system, but he figured Charles wouldn't have programmed it to respond correctly if he hadn't expected his students to treat the system with respect and manners.

The files that were displayed before him were not what he had been expecting to see. Remy had expected names, dates, building schematics, government contacts. Instead what he was looking at was a very sophisticated financial ledger, most of it appeared to be in Russian. From the figures the company...Mutragenics was the name he was able to find in the statements, was a pretty fat and happy corporation. That in itself was suspicious. Not only was the US undergoing a recession, but the financial climate in Russia was crumbling. Between fuel prices and cost of living expenses most companies were having difficulty keeping up. Even Worthington Industries, though well supported and well situated for the current business climate, was feeling the economic strain and posting numbers that were hardly close to spectacular. This company, whatever it was, was putting up figures straight out of the late nineties and the web economic boom.

He sat going over earning potential statistics for a quarter that dwarfed most companies' current fiscal gross incomes. It was almost sickening. Then he stopped. "How de fuck does a company make money like dis an I ain' heard of 'em?" he muttered to himself, digging deeper into the file. He focused on the task of finding a name, somebody or something he could link this to. After all it was no secret that Remy LeBeau was a very well off man with a portfolio it took a staff of seventeen, consisting of lawyers, accountants, financial advisors and market analysts (along with one lone real estate broker), to properly manage. Among all of them, as well as his not quite legit contacts there was no possible way a company anywhere in the world, let alone one in depression sunk Slavic territory, could be posting these figures without him knowing about it. The sense of wrongness permeated the entire jump drive.

Not being able to put his finger on it, Remy left the financial accounts folder and instead dove into the material he was hoping to avoid. His Russian was less than adequate on the best of days... with a few drinks in him. Colossus had at one point joked that Remy knew just enough to pick up a few black market Russian slave hookers at a dive bar with the help of a translator. Fact was it was going to be painfully slow going through all this material on his own since Peter had (in his opinion at the moment) rather selfishly (though most of the world regarded it more along the lines of heroically) sacrificed himself to cure the Legacy Virus more than two years back. Thus leaving him effectively without a trustworthy translator.

Gambit leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes slowly to relieve them from the stress looking at a computer monitor caused his overly sensitive retinas. After a moment he looked up at his desk clock. Six twenty-two glared at him in overly happy red digital numbers. He glared back. Somehow the clock didn't get the hint and he gave up trying, opting rather to climb out of his desk chair and throw on clothes that he hadn't already been wearing for close to twenty four hours.

Much as he'd rather sleep, he had always made it a point since taking over to have breakfast with his team. It was one thing Cyclops always did that Gambit had chosen to continue. He found it gave the team a sense of equality when they found that their leader didn't indulge himself in breakfast in bed and late morning naps when they were all up and about getting ready to run themselves ragged in the Danger Room. Of course, the only indulging Gambit would have been doing was possibly balancing the school checkbook and reading through the backlog of reports that filled every desk drawer he had. It didn't matter, that was not what the team would think was going on, and he knew it. Joining them for breakfast also gave him a feeling of being part of the team rather than above it; when he could sit and laugh with them about little things, antics and goings on at home that he would've missed holed up in his room going over statistics.

He tied on his shoes and grabbed his trench coat on his way out the door. Another thing he had learned long ago, though it had nothing to do with leadership. Breakfast could become a pretty cold affair when it was the resident Ice Cube's turn to cook, and Lord help him, Gambit was pretty sure today was Thursday.

* * *

"Yo, incoming!" gave him just enough warning to duck and roll as a plate of pancakes, syrup and all, soared right past where his head had formerly been. "Sorry man." The owner of the warning shouted from where he stood next to Bobby as he readied another plate. Gambit just shrugged and gave Ricochet a thumbs up before making his way over toward the table.

"Save the practicin' for later, bub." Logan shouted grabbing the plate out of midair and sliding it the rest of the way down the table.

"My thanks." Hank nodded before sinking his fork in. Logan simply nodded back.

"Who says I need practice, old man?" Nick laughed grabbing another plate and getting ready to hurl it again towards the table.

"Dat'd be me." Remy stated, pointing at himself and letting his smug grin do the rest of the talking.

"K, got it, no throwing around breakfast." Nick shrugged and carried the next two plates over, putting one in front of Storm and the next in front of his leader with a nod. Nicolas Papavisilios was one of the current "newbies" at the mansion. From what Hank had figured out Nick's powers pretty much acted like an ongoing physics experiment. He could perfectly judge how much momentum and at what angle an object would have to be thrown in order to hit an intended target with the correct amount of force to cause the intended amount of damage. Minimal telekinetic enhancements allowed him to ensure such objects maintained the correct velocity. Needless to say from that point forward Gambit refused to play pool against him.

He checked quickly to make sure that he wasn't going to be today's flash freeze victim before digging into his own breakfast. Lack of sleep always led to an increased appetite, and lately Remy had been eating enough for two team members simply to keep up his stamina, not that it showed- yet. The door opened in the middle of his second bite and he looked up to greet whoever had come down to join them. He also immediately regretted it. "Well look what decided to come down for breakfast." He muttered to his pancakes.

"Be a dear and shove it." Mystique's fake smile did nothing to hide the 'out for blood' look in her eyes this morning.

"I can take care of that." Nick shouted from across the room and launched another plate of pancakes toward Mystique, who ducked seconds before it would have hit her square in the face. Instead it splattered all over the front of Jubilee who had just stood to clear her plate.

"Like total Ick!" She shouted standing there, staring in shock at her ruined t-shirt. "You are soooo buying me a new shirt, Nick!"

Nick shrugged. "Let Mystique buy it, she started it."

"How exactly do you figure I did that?" Mystique asked from her perch on the chair that had been sitting empty behind her when the plate flew.

"You said to shove it." Nick turned back to grab another plate to place on the table this time along with a roll of paper towels for Jubilee and her apparently much loved shirt. "I was just hoping you'd open your mouth wide enough."

Laughter erupted around the table as Nick handed the paper towels to Jubilee, put some more pancakes down in front of Kitty and made his way back to Drake for more without a second thought as to what he had just said or any apparent concern for what might embed itself between his shoulder blades. "You have a death wish." Bobby laughed, handing him the next full plate.

Nick shrugged. "I dance with death every day. I eat your cooking don't I?"

"Which is more than I can say for tha rest of us. Let's speed it up Bobby, a girl could starve to death over here." Rogue laughed from the far end of the kitchen table.

"Cereal for the loud mouthed southerner!" Bobby shouted, holding his spatula aloft like a scepter.

"Which one?" Phantasm shouted from her seat next to Rogue.

"Dere are t'ree of us y'know." Remy chimed in, winking at the two girls.

"All of them!" Bobby shouted, waving the spatula in the air. "Genius cannot be rushed."

"Indeed." Hank stated, looking up from his book to join in the conversation. "It most certainly cannot. But since I am most afraid that you do not suffer from such an affliction Robert I see no reason you cannot increase the current rate of the cooking process. Speaking from the perspective of a genius of course."

"I do believe Hank just busted on me." Bobby frowned and gave a bewildered look before turning back to the stove.

"Score one for team South." Phantasm laughed and held up her hand to high five Rogue. "Now we just gotta score us some food."

Remy was just about to go in for his fourth bite when a barely visible but fully solid telekinetic dome appeared over his plate and it began to make it's way over toward Charlotte Manning, aka Phantasm, and Rogue. "Hey, y'can' jus steal a man's breakfast. Dat ain' fair."

"Looks lahk it's too late swamprat." Rogue giggled and grabbed the plate that Phantasm uncovered as soon as it was securely on their side of the table. "So much for master theif, gettin' y'breakfast stolen out from under your nose." She tsked and Charlotte giggled.

Remy just shrugged and reached for another plate that was coming off the stove. He had seen Bobby nod when Rogue took the plate. She loaded her fork up with a big bite and winked at him before biting down on a frozen solid piece of pancacke. "Bobby Drake!"

"What can I say, team South boys versus girls, and you ladies lost."

"Bobby, y'ain't from the South." Charlotte giggled, shaking her head.

"Yo, I'm from South Brooklyn, a'ight!" Bobby pointed the spatula menacingly, then returned to flipping pancakes. "Don' make me go gangsta on yo' ass."

"In his man apron." Kitty added, giggling behind her orange juice.

Remy laughed, it was good to see them all like this. There were days lately he felt that wistful look of regard that Scott used to give them settling on his own face. He could understand now. It was nice to know that, Mystique patently excluded, the reality of the world around them hadn't broken them yet. They were still able to laugh. "Leave de boy an' his apron alone Kit." Remy admonished then cleared his throat and took on his 'leader voice'. "Gonna need y'all in de Danger Room dis morning. Dish duty can wait Jubilation." He looked directly at her, silencing the excuse that had frozen on her lips before she could even fully open them. "Was going over de results from de conditioning exercises an' I ain't impressed. Some o' y'gettin' lazy." He knew better than to actually look at any of them. They knew who they were without the rest of the team knowing, and if they didn't they'd find out the hard way. "Den we havin' a debriefin' at 10, so shower quick cuz if Logan has to smell you t'rough the entire meeting I'm gonna let him deal with you after."

"Full team or senior staff only, Remy?" Storm asked from her perch at the island.

He mulled that over in his head. If he got the whole team involved now he'd have to keep them involved, if he only pulled in the senior rank he could always debrief the others later. Of course, that usually caused tempers to flare and attitudes to spark up at the worst possible moments. "Full team." He answered, there wasn't enough information yet to worry about the new recruits sensitivity to danger. There was always the option of sending them on a wild goose chase later while the heavy hitters took care of the real problems. Lord, what he wouldn't give to hand over this job. But nobody could do it better, and after his display of what he could do both in New Orleans and over the past months here in New York they wouldn't let him abdicate too easily. Not to mention it would gnaw rather uncomfortably on what little conscience he still retained knowing he had left them to figure things out on their own. Storm cast a concerned gaze toward him, he just shrugged back and made a mental note that Stormy apparently knew something. He polished off the last of his second plate of pancakes and placed it on the counter before heading down to the locker room himself.

Of course, he wasn't alone, his spatial awareness had clued him in to that from the moment he walked out the kitchen door. Once down in the sublevels he finally stopped and turned around, quirking an eyebrow at her in a way that he knew she found infuriating and waited.

"Yah said we'd talk."

"I said we could talk if you wanted to."

Rogue crossed her arms across her chest and started stubbing her toe on the adamantium floor. Every line of her body read of uncertainty and a need to stay away. It was one of her many habits that he found infuriating. "So let's talk."

He conceded, there was still a half hour before the rest of the team would be heading toward the Danger Room. Remy let his shoulder rest against the wall and let his hand sweep out between them, indicating she had the floor, respectively speaking.

"Yah look like hell, sugah."

He laughed, nodding and closing his eyes. "Nobody said dis job gonna be easy."

"Nobody said yah had ta do it all by yourself neither. Scott never did."

"Non, he had his wife do all the paperwork. Smart man."

That rubbed her the wrong way, he'd known it would. "Ah could help yah...if you'd let me. Yah gotta let somebody help you, it's gettin' ridiculous. You don't sleep hardly enough, yah ain't eatin' right...and you smell like a cesspool so Ah _know_ y'ain't showered in more'n a day, maybe two."

"Now you sound like my wife..." he forced a deep breath. "Why you so worried bout me, _chere_?"

She shrugged, inching a bit closer to him. "You said we'd always be friends, no matter what." A ghost of a smile flitted across her face. "And friends don' let friends work themselves to death." She laughed. "Would've said 'drive drunk' but Ah'm pretty sure Ah've let ya do that on more than one occasion."

Now he laughed too. "_Oui chere_, t'ink ya have. Not dat I would've let y' stop me." He examined her posture. No doubt of it, much as she wanted to avoid any chance of contact with him there was still that lingering hint of hope that they'd work things out. It was like an old wound that wouldn't stop itching, that hope they both still harbored, that they could work through the stockpiles of shit they called their history and manage to have a normal relationship. God help him, but he was going to scratch the itch at least once more. "You win. Dis afternoon y' can help me wit some reports, deal?"

He could tell he'd caught her by surprise, but it wore off quickly and she nodded. He smiled and put one arm cautiously around her shoulder, "So tell me, Rogue, how good is y' Russian?"


	2. Chapter 2

Walking into the locker room he felt...lighter. It was an odd feeling, but somewhat pleasant if only for its novelty. If he had to put a name to it he'd call it _resolution_. Yes, that almost fit. It was a feeling of purpose tied into determination with a big bow of relief on top. And all it had taken was a two minute conversation and an infinitesimal dropping of his guard. Small things, that's all it took sometimes, yet those small things were so hard to remember.

He rolled his shoulders, working the stiffness from sleeping fully dressed in the wrong position slowly out of his muscles. Turning, he stopped at his locker just long enough to strip and grab a towel. If he was going to be here twenty five minutes early he was taking advantage. Rogue was right about one thing, he did smell like a cesspool. A quick glance in the mirror only confirmed that he looked as bad as he smelled; not comforting. What had happened to the suave, sophisticated, well groomed Remy LeBeau he was so used to greeting in the mirror every morning? The mirror didn't answer, and frankly he wasn't sure he wanted it to.

Showering had become a luxury lately, and he was glad to have the group shower all to himself. He could do without the soap dropping jokes for a day. As always he wondered what Xavier had been thinking, with his nearly unlimited finances, putting a group shower in the men's locker room instead of individual stalls; the eccentricities of the rich.

His bare feet slapped against the painfully cold tile and the water was running as fast as he could reach the dial. He sighed and let the stream run over him, not waiting for it to warm up. Being that close to that woman usually necessitated a cold shower on his part anyway, even when he smelled like a barn...a _condemned_ barn, he mentally corrected, full of rotting manure. Actually, now that he thought about it, being that close to _any_ woman was starting to lead to cold showers. What had happened to Remy LeBeau? He felt the water warm as it ran over his shoulders and down his back, just standing and letting muscles loosen. Contentment edged in to join resolution.

The door behind him began to open and slam shut with an irregular rhythm and growing frequency, alerting him that he needed to speed up the shower and get suited up to join the team. Reluctantly he reached for soap and shampoo.

A low whistle caught his attention as the last of the suds flowed down the drain at his feet. It was just enough to make him turn his head. "Those are some righteous battle scars, bro." Nick commented from where he sat, lacing up one boot while the other lay crumpled on the floor between his feet. Remy recognized the beginnings of hero worship in that tone and eyed his back over his shoulder in the reflective section of adamantium surface that hadn't fogged over with condensation.

That was a reaction he didn't need, too many hero worshippers ended up dead. He'd seen it in the Guild too often to allow it to happen here. "Dese?" he shrugged as he turned the water off and reached for his towel. "Ain' no battle scars. Dey a rite of passage dat a stupid boy t'ought would make 'im a better man." The whip marks across his back had indeed faded significantly since his days of banishment, the skin no longer tight enough to restrict movement. In fact, he had almost forgotten they existed. He wrapped the towel securely around his waist and turned to face Nick fully, displaying the three jagged tear marks across his chest that, almost ten years later, still refused to fade. "Now dese are battle scars. Almost cost me my life, my friends, an' my sanity. Dey did cost me my soul, an' dey ain' nothin' to be proud of boy. Scars' jus' a reminder dat y' went an' did somet'in real stupid, an' y' damn lucky dat all y'got is scars." He watched Nick pale and heard him gulp. He knew the marks weren't pretty. His left pectoral looked like a chunk had been ripped out of the lower half of it—probably because it had been. His navel was non-existent, stitched back together by the street surgeon who had sutured the rest of the wound. The lower part of the middle scar had corded outwards from his abdominal wall, distorting what might otherwise have been an impressive six pack. The marks were pink and ugly against his lightly tanned skin. They were proof positive that bad guys like Sabretooth didn't mess around—if they wanted you dead, they'd do their damndest to manage it.

"Wolverine?" Nick whispered, turning to look at the implicated party.

"Hah!" Logan laughed. He pulled on his glove and pointed from Gambit's chest to Ricochet's. "Sabretooth. Lines're too jagged. Turns out I'm the one who saved Gumbo's sorry ass that night." Gambit shrugged, conceding and watched the shorter man turn back and eye him. "Course, if I'da known, I would've let 'em kill ya." The cold glint from his eyes was unmistakable, there was no doubt the Wolverine meant every word of that statement, and Gambit knew it.

Even after knowing he'd been forgiven, the truth still hurt. But he couldn't fault Logan for telling the truth. "You'd've done both of us a favor, _mon ami_." He looked around the locker room at the rest of the males of the team. The atmosphere had certainly deteriorated along with the topic and all eyes were on him. "But on dat happy note, I t'ink we should be headin' up to the Danger Room. De girls never gon' let us live it down if dey all beat us up dere."

"Sure Cajun," Logan gestured at the towel that still sat around Gambit's hips. "But word of warning, gets mighty drafty up there."

"Don' wanna know how you know dat, _mon ami_. An' I'm prayin' y' erased de tapes." Logan shot him a feral grin. "Was sort of goin' for de Commando effect. You know, naked, raw power."

"What you do in yer off time ain't none of my business, and I don't care what the ladies call it."

"I will _never_ understand this place." Nick muttered as he passed both of them.

Logan and Remy looked at each other, eyes met and neither could contain their laughter. "Sad t'ing is, I feel de same way." Remy finally managed to choke out. Man, did it feel good to laugh for once.

"Ain' much ta understand, Cajun." Logan slapped him on the back, the last to head for the locker room door. "Ya don't gotta understand family, ya deal with it an' try not to let it get to ya."

* * *

The scent of clean towels and soap that permeated the locker room was refreshing. Ororo could think of very few smells that rivaled clean laundry. Her silvery hair had finally grown long enough again that she could contain it all in a high ponytail, the wisps framing her face the only exception. Rogue was the only other person already in the locker room, though it was no secret why. Storm shook her head, it was continually frustrating to watch friend and friend attempt to work things out only to somehow have it all blow up in their respective faces. Yet she knew them both too well; Rogue was too stubborn to give in and Remy was too enthralled by the chase to give up. In a cosmically tragic way they were perfect for each other. Just as she and Logan were not. It was...aggravating.

She stopped and centered. She was in control. "Rogue, you are ready early." Storm commented. She pulled her uniform out of her locker and laid it out on the bench. She was still adjusting to the new uniforms, the black such a stark contrast to her previous white.

Rogue moved out of her way, a habit that Storm often doubted she was even aware of, giving people more space than they actually required. "Needed some words with the swamprat." Storm watched Rogue toss her hairbrush back into her bag and straddle the opposite bench to begin stretching. "Bout time he listened to some reason."

Storm arched an eyebrow inquisitively. "Reason?"

"He's yoah buddy, Storm. Ya can't tell me y'all haven't noticed him walkin' round here like a zombie." Rogue waved her arms wide, "Ah know he ain' sleepin' much. If his bedroom lights go off at all it ain' for more'n a few hours. He goes days without shavin', showerin' or even changin' his clothes. He's been eatin' like a starvin' hog..."

"Have you been stalking him?" Rogue shot her a look that was part scorn, part guilt before opening her mouth to reply. Storm held up a hand to stop whatever rejoinder Rogue was working towards. "Alright. You are correct, he has not exactly been himself lately."

Rogue crossed both arms over her chest and leaned forward, a scowl firmly fixed on her face. "It's killin' him, Storm. He's tryin' to do Scott's job, Xavier's job and Gambit's job all at the same time. Last I checked he's only one person. One damn fool stubborn person."

Storm smirked. "The description sounds familiar."

"Oh no." Rogue's eyes sparked. "Ah'm stubborn alright, but I know I got limits. That fool Cajun hadn' even stopped to think that there's a mansion full o' people right under his nose who could pitch in an' give him a hand." Storm watched Rogue's eyes narrow slightly. "An' you used ta be co-leader Storm. You're his best friend. You shoulda been helpin' him with all this since day one."

Deep breath and center, Storm reminded herself. "You are right." She looked down at the floor for a minute to gather her thoughts. "Remy can be..._is_...very willful. Do not think I have not tried. He _does_ think he needs to do it all on his own, and I do not know why. I also do not know how to make it clear to him that he can ask for help." She forcefully injected all the warmth she could into her voice, hoping it had the intended effect. "I am glad you were able to get through to him. I have been worried as well."

She watched Rogue visibly loosen and sit straighter, the threat in her stance melted away. "Ah'm just glad he's finally lettin' somebody help him, at this point don't matter who. Hell, I'd hire his ex-wife on if I thought it'd help him get some sleep. Another month an' I swear he'll stroke out if this keeps up." Storm watched a tremor run through Rogue's body at the thought. It was sweet and sad at the same time, seeing how deep the connection between the two ran that one could in fact feel physical pain for the other. It was something Storm was quite sure she would never experience. "Well, Ah'm headin' up. Don't know why Ah gotta do these dumb conditionin' exercises. Remy _knows_ I don't get muscle fatigue."

"An' how's he know that?" Jubilee shouted from the entryway, Kitty laughing behind her. Storm realized belatedly that neither of them had noticed the pair enter, they hadn't been paying enough attention to the time.

"Girl, get yoh mind outta the gutter."

"Oh, come on Rogue." Kitty laughed as she phased through Rogue rather than walking by her, knowing how much it set her on edge. "Remy _wishes_ he knew you didn't get muscle fatigue. You know it, so doesn't everybody else. And we applaud you for not letting that walking hormone hump your leg like a stray dog."

Storm was pretty sure that Rogue was blushing as deep crimson as possible. Rogue turned and opened the door between the locker room and the Danger Room stiffly, still facing the laughing girls. "Kitty, he ain't lookin' to hump me like some stray dog, an' my endurance abilities ain' got nothin' to do with...with..."

"With what, _chere_?" Apparently, Storm thought, Rogue could blush purple.

She watched Rogue freeze, and turn so slowly she seemed not to move at all. "How much did you hear, swamprat?" It was low and threatening, a tone that would put an animal's hair on end.

"Enough." Storm couldn't see him from where she sat, but she could hear and feel the laughter in his eyes, which she was sure were reflected on her own face. She kept herself focused on the tile floor to avoid inflaming the situation by giving any emotion away. "An' for de record, Kitty, ain' a good idea t'refer ta ya leader as a walkin' hormone cuz he's de one dat's got de authority to make you sit on watch duty for de next month." Rogue went stiff and walked into the Danger Room, assumingly past Gambit, and the door slammed shut behind her.

"She is, like, totally gonna murder us both." Jubilee muttered, her head buried in her locker.

"Eh, it's good for her." Kitty spat. Storm shrugged into her uniform while she watched Kitty do the same. "That girl is so afraid of her own body and everything that goes with it. It's good for her to hear what a guy might want to do with that body. Heck, I know for a fact Hank got a hard on the last time he had to do a physical for her."

That chewed away the very last bit of self restraint Storm possessed. "And how would you know that, Kitten?"

"I was the next one in line. Sitting in the waiting room…it's kinda hard to miss...unless you're Rogue." Kitty laced up her last boot. "Love her like a sister, but she's so naive sometimes it kills me."

* * *

"Y'okay, _chere_?" Remy whispered, standing nonchalantly next to her while the rest of the group assembled.

"Fine."

It had been so forced her lips hadn't even moved away from her teeth. "Talk later?"

"Nothing to talk about." She shifted her gaze over to him briefly before looking back at the wall. "I'm going to kill them."

Remy smirked. "Take it out during de session, don' make me have to punish you for somet'ing stupid Kitty said." He turned toward her, breaking her concentration on the wall. "Dat's an _order_, Rogue. I catch you or her startin' shit wit' each other outside dese four walls over some joke dat went bad and you'll have a whole new reason to hate me. Clear?"

He thought he saw guilt, fear, and sadness flicker through her eyes for a moment before the hard defiance settled back into place. Though this time it was tempered by restraint. "Crystal, sugah."

"_Bien_," he gestured toward the rest of the waiting group. "Time we got dis show on de road, eh?" They grouped up and he silently sized up his team before launching into his full blown leader mode. It was a skill that he had despised in Cyclops during his first few years on the team, but had recently come to terms with and grown to almost appreciate, though he still despised how it sounded coming from his own lips. "So like I said earlier, been going over some of the recent readouts from Cerebro and a few of you ain't postin' numbers or meetin' targets like y'should. Ain't gonna name names, ain't gonna point fingers. I also ain't gonna lie to you, dere's no room for slackers on my roster. We go out dere in de field and I'm puttin' all yo lives on de line. I refuse to trust yo' safety to somebody who ain't puttin' in de effort." He briefly scanned the line, made eye contact with most of them and judged they were still listening enough that it was safe to continue. "So we gonna do dis here conditioning exercise. Don' ask how long it's gonna take, cuz dat's up to all of you. De objective is fairly simple: don' get caught. We gonna be usin' de Sentinel program, and we de targets dis time. Simulation ends when one of you gets captured and can't get free after ten seconds. Watch yo' backs, watch yo' teammates. You are all on evasive maneuvers an' dere ain' a lot of hidin' places so don' go holin' yourselves up. Cerebro is trackin' you and I will know. Questions?" He did another brief scan but saw nothing to indicate anything other than anticipation. "Kay, Cerebro cue up Sentinel protocol Alpha 902 Theta 54 please."

"Certainly, Gambit." The computerized voice answered, followed by the flashing lights and the klaxon alarm warning that the simulation was about to begin. In a way, Gambit found himself anticipating the exercise too, not just to burn off what little energy he actually possessed, but to see the reaction from his team. This scenario was his latest work of art. They were used to cities and towns, places with escape routes, obstacles and debris. This was going to be different…there was no place to hide in the desert. The battle conditions were going to be climate controlled. It was already starting to get hot, as the floor beneath him changed to Shi'ar produced slippery sand. A wind picked up and he could tell from the shock on a few people's faces that they had not expected anything like this. But how better to test endurance than in the harshest climate known to man, other than Antarctica of course? He had contemplated using that setting for some time, Antarctica, but ultimately decided it might open too many old wounds that were better left to heal or fester of their own accord.

"Brilliant," he heard Hank mutter from his right before the odd mechanical/hydraulic sound that he could only associate with a Sentinel distracted him from what the team might be doing. Then he ran and watched the rest of them scatter, noticing idly that the scatter pattern wasn't random, which was good. They were thinking.

He found himself grouped with Iceman and Bishop, the former seemed to be having unexpected problems with the training environment and the latter seemed far more intent on attacking than evading. "Good thing this is a running exercise, boss." Iceman shouted. "No humidity, no ice. I'm not good for much besides running at this point."

He nodded and looked over at Bishop, who had hit a standstill and was firing at the incoming bogey. He realized it was coming in too fast. "Don' just stand dere, pup!" Bishop dove and Gambit released a volley of charged cards, aiming for the dune between the Sentinel and its target. The resulting spray gave Bishop enough cover to get out of range before the Sentinel could reach out for him with one of it's grappling tentacles.

"I always forget how freaking _huge_ these things are." Bobby commented from Gambit's right. "We got one more incoming." This one was coming in from due east, the one aiming for Bishop had come from the south. Quickly, he mentally traced the routes the other small groups had taken. His group had been the one to head southeast. The Sentinels were herding them. "Damn smart robots, their pushing us back together." Iceman had apparently reached the same conclusion.

"_Targets identified. Mutant Iceman, Mutant Gambit, Mutant Bishop surrender or you will be eliminated._" The enormous robot reached one arm toward Gambit and he let loose another volley, removing three of the Sentinel's fingers in the process.

"Forget how charmin' dey are too?"

"If we continue south, but let them herd us back west we should circle around behind some of them." Bishop stated, he had recovered from his roll down another dune and had joined back up with the two.

Gambit nodded as they ran, "Y'good for some cover fire? Keep 'em trailin' us in only one direction? I ain't lookin' t'get sandwiched." Bishop nodded, which was good enough for him. He saw lightning up ahead, that meant Storm was still fighting, and saw a dot moving through the air. Too fast to be Storm, too big to be Rogue, had to be Angel. Personally Gambit liked to keep his fliers spread out, but they always clumped together on him. He filed that away for another time.

Bishop turned and fired on the two Sentinels that were tracking them, one of whom looked slightly angrier than the other for being short a few fingers even though Gambit knew the robots couldn't get 'angry'. A stitch was starting to develop in his left side, and Gambit realized rather belatedly that it would be somewhat embarrassing if this scenario ended because of him. Suddenly a hand was on his arm. "Gambit stop a second!" Iceman said, running a hand over the Cajun's face then reaching for Bishop.

"What are you doing?" Bishop asked, releasing another powerful lazer blast.

"Beautiful sweat!" Iceman laughed, turning the beads into an ice spear. "Hope this works." He turned and threw it at the Sentinel that had gotten too close, lodging it in the knee joint.

"And that will do what?" Bishop again questioned as the three commenced running.

"Structural weakness." Gambit stated, aware now of the Iceman's plan. "Open circuitry in the knee, water can short out the mechanism."

Iceman smiled, "Exactly!" Gambit noticed some concern on Bobby's face when he turned to look in his direction. "You alright Gambit?"

He shook his head. "Fine. Run." He didn't have enough breath to say much more. His side was screaming, his blood was pounding in his ears and his finger tips were numb. He could still only think of how embarrassing it would be if he ended his own training scenario.

Almost instantaneously he found himself running on metal floor instead of soft sand. "Training session over." Cerebro anounced as his team gathered up in the center of the room.

"Who?" He asked the group, glad it only needed to be a one word question.

Eyes glanced around the room until Mystique sauntered forward, her hands on her hips. "I got bored." She shrugged and gave him a seductive smile before sashaying off to the locker room. He tried not to be angry, counted to ten, looked behind him at the blue figure as she passed through the door and counted to ten again. Finally he looked at the session clock, forty two minutes, longer than their typical evasion scenarios. He'd let it slide and not reorder the practice. They looked sufficiently tired.

"War Room, you got twenty minutes." He heard a few groans as most of them turned toward the locker rooms. "And team…" They stopped and he smiled. "Good job out dere."

* * *

It was still different…odd…sitting in the leader chair, facing everybody as if he had all the answers. Especially when he knew he didn't, he mostly had questions and few of those were even entirely clear. Gambit toyed with the flash drive, eyeing it dubiously, like it held answers that it was hiding from him. When the last seat was taken he looked up and plugged the stick into one of the ports on his left. "Dis information was obtained last night from a gov'ment source. Most of it has not been translated, so we still not sure what exactly we're looking at, but it is believed that the company represented by dis information is somehow linked to the disappearances we been looking into dese past few weeks." He let that sink in for a minute. "De only information I been able to make any headway with is de financial stuff. The company earnings are off de charts. I got a couple leads working on tracing down where de cash flow is coming from and going to." Technically that was a lie, he hadn't contacted the Guild yet…but that was only because of time constraints. He would be placing a call to Theoren as soon as this meeting was over and hopefully have somebody on the ground in Russia before the end of the day. "In de meantime, dere's been some other information coming through the underground contacts dat I t'ink you should all be aware of. I know we all been hearing about de new Chinese law enforcement program. De street rumor is dat Bolivar Trask be running dat operation." He heard a murmur of reaction around the table hit him from all sides and held up his hands. "Now, I still got proof dat our friend Bolivar is following de letter of his sentence if not de spirit and is staying inside his London apartment. Dis could simply be street hysteria. Until we know for certain, we staying out of it. In de meantime we gon be doin' a lot of Sentinel training programs like we did dis mornin', I don' want us t'get caught wit' our pants down on dis one." He saw a couple grimaces and some satisfied nods. There were also some stone faced acceptances that was the best he could expect from some of his team. It would have to do. "Reason I been checkin' up on our little friend is dat de rumor mill also got activity goin' on in Genosha. Now I know dat ain' highly likely given de current circumstances dere, but better safe den sorry, eh?"

"Current circumstances?" Charlotte piped in and Gambit nodded to Hank who pulled up a virtual schematic of the island that hovered over the round War Table.

"Y' ever hear de sayin' Rome wasn' built in a day?" He asked, pointing at the mass of buildings that would have indicated Genosha's capital. "Magneto hadn'. All dis was built in practically a day. Man sure had a way of playin' God. He used all de iron and other metals in de bedrock of de island, which we all knew." With a flick of his hand the hologram rotated and the city skyline disappeared. "What nobody suspected, mostly cuz we didn' t'ink he'd be dat dumb or crazy, was dat Magnus used _all_ de metal deposits, ripped everyt'ing up to de surface an' left de whole island completely unstable. So when de whole big finale went down…"

Hank cleared his throat and stepped in to the conversation, just as Remy had hoped he would. "I believe what our esteemed leader is attempting to illustrate is that when the force of the aerial attack impacted the island there was not enough structural support left for the ground to support both the attack and the existing structures, causing the island as a whole to virtually implode." Remy watched Hank scan the table and take in the still blank looks of his teammates. "Ahem, big bomb hit island make big boom. Buildings go bye-bye. Man no can live on island no more."

"Gotcha!" Jubilee piped up from the back of the room.

Remy had to laugh at the injured look on Beast's face, being forced to resort to such language. "Exactly, so it ain' too likely dat dere's much goin' on in dat neck of de woods. Just de same, if de rumor mills don' quiet down we may be makin' a bit of trip out dat way."

"How long until you have those files translated?" Storm asked from his left.

"Hopefully a day or two, given some help." To her credit, Rogue didn't flinch at the comment. "Now about today's session, forty two minutes ain' bad. However…" He scanned the room briefly, eyes settling finally on Mystique who had taken out a pocket knife to clean her nails as if she hadn't a care in the world. "Raven." She glanced up briefly, Remy knew it was the best he was going to get. "Y' pull another stunt like dat one back dere an' I'm packin' y'off to Cable faster'n you can blink."

"I'd like to see you try."

"Don' tempt me Raven. Y'very lucky I got room and patience for y'. After de stunt you pulled wit Creed you just plain lucky t'be breathin'. So if y'bored I'm sure Nathan'd be more'n happy to keep you entertained…indefinitely." She eyed him callously, the yellow irises almost impossible to read if you didn't know her well. "Dere are much worse fates den death, and I will make sure you find one given de opportunity if you keep dis shit up." He looked away, dismissing her as unimportant before she could turn the chastisement into an argument that would only end with him looking bad.

"As for de rest of you, I'll be handing out individual reports when I get a chance to look over the readouts. Overall, y'did good. Fliers…" He looked over toward where Rogue and Angel were sitting, knowing he already had Storm's attention. "I know I said dis before, y'gotta keep y'selves separated. Dere's a lotta sky up dere, it can't be dat tough. Y' make a much more tempting target all bunched together than y'do if you keep y'distance. Telepaths…" He looked over toward Betsy and Charlotte. "Either neither one o'ya decided to link me into the communication network or y' both just plumb forgot to make one." Betsy nodded once, tensely and Charlotte looked down to the floor, a slight blush coloring her cheeks. "Dat's what I thought. We dealin' with robots, dey can't 'hear' you. Next time _don' forget_." He scanned the remainder of his team briefly. "Questions?" No response came, and nobody looked like they were holding anything back. He nodded. "Den it looks like y'all got de rest of de day off, 'cept for your daily assignments o'course. Soon as I know more, you'll know more. Dismissed."

As a group they stood and filtered out, most heading toward the upper levels but some heading back toward the locker rooms to finish washing up. Rogue lagged behind, waiting with him in the room until everybody else had left. "Y' got somet'in' t'ask me, _chere_?"

"That was pretty cold, sugah." She leaned forward across the back of her chair, leaning toward him but keeping her distance. It was enough to drive a man crazy.

"Which part? You groupin' up on me or feedin' Mystique to de wolves?"

Rogue rolled her eyes and Remy could see her put her hackles up. It was fascinating the way her body would tense, shoulders rise, eyes narrow, hands ball into fists and her chin would jut just a tiny bit forward. It was her fighter stance, and boy did he know it well. "Ya know she does it just t' git you all riled up. Ya don't even know for sure that she was the one that ended that training session."

Remy nodded. "Y'right. Fact I'm pretty sure it wasn't her."

Rogue huffed, it sounded like an angry freight train and if he didn't step carefully Remy would have that train come barreling down on him…again. "So why'd you say that stuff then?"

He slowly unfolded himself from his chair and rose to his full height, stepping around the table so there was nothing between them but air. He had found with Rogue it was just as important to physically stand your ground as it was to do so philosophically. He was pretty sure it had to do with her lack of physical contact, but the girl was almost inept at reading the subtle nuances of body language. Sitting in a chair, regardless of his expression or how he was sitting would be interpreted by Rogue as him dismissing her as not worth the time. Making his intentions so blatant was something that had taken him time to adjust to, being trained so long in subtlety. "De simple fact dat she took responsibility for it, an' acted like it didn' matter, in front of de whole team…Rogue t'ink about what dat does to morale for a second. I got young kids bustin' dere butts in dat room to try and prove dey got what it takes to be part of dis team. I can't have one person draining morale and spoilin' dere efforts by being blatantly insubordinate every chance she gets. De rules gotta apply to everyone, and everyone gotta put in de same effort or else dis whole t'ing goes up in smoke."

"Did ya mean it?" Her shoulders had fallen slightly, her eyes were no longer narrowed. He was pretty sure he was back in the safe zone.

"Bout sendin' her out to Cable?" Rogue nodded and he sighed, running a hand through his hair he looked down at the floor. "Tween you and me? I can't afford to send her away. Good Lord knows she's gon be de death of me, but she's good. Jus' too bad she knows it. But dat stays 'tween you an' me. Mystique can sniff out an idle threat a mile away, and I gotta have somet'ing to hold over her to make sure she toes the line."

Rogue sighed. "Ah know she drives ya crazy. She drives _everyone_ crazy. But she's still my Momma, Remy. You, more'n everybody else here, has ta learn to live with her."

"Why's dat, _chere_?" He grinned, then nodded. "Y'right. But nobody gets special treatment. Including you."

She put her hands on her hips and glared at him, but this was the mock glare. This glare he could live with, in fact it made her look damn good. "What is that supposed to mean, swamprat?"

"Means dat you promised to give your leader some help wit' a certain project…so you best be in my office in two hours. Be an extra day on cleaning detail for every minute you're late." He decided to go for the gold and tapped her on the nose with one gloved finger before she could react. The look on her face was worth the risk. With that he smiled and walked out of the room leaving a fuming Rogue behind.


	3. Chapter 3

The question was an interesting one, and she let it sit and stew in her mind while she tended to the tropical oasis around her. A snip here, some water there and an occasional whisper of encouragement—that was the secret to her magic. Weather, she had realized, was what enabled nature to exist. Yet it was here, where she the weather goddess was able to create a lush environment with her own two hands alone, this was where she felt the most human. Here she overcame her very nature and relied solely on the skills of her hands and mind to create something beautiful. Her visitor didn't press, something that didn't go unnoticed or unappreciated. "Then you believe," she finally stated, staring into the face of an orchid whose name she could not quite recall, "that the rumor is fact?"

"It is more than likely."

She nodded and moved along. "Bishop, I am given to understanding from your accounts of your world that the lines of fact and fiction were not entirely…stable." He shrugged uncomfortably, and she raised one eyebrow at him in reply to the unspoken acknowledgement. "The difference between rumor and truth was judged by the recipient of the rumor, not by fact but circumstance. That is correct?"

He leaned heavily against the doorframe to the greenhouse, arms crossed over his chest. "Storm, this time I am right. Gambit knows it's true, the rumors are correct."

"And you fear that what we assumed to be the war to begin your future was, in actuality, not." She sighed and spun back to face him, mimicking his stance. Arms crossed heavily over her chest, head tilted slightly downward so her eyes were leveled along her brow line, one corner of her mouth strayed toward the floor and her feet turned slightly apart. "Bishop it is not simply _your_ future, it is all of our futures. What you seem unable to accept is that you have as little control over the outcome as any of us do. The Goddess knows what tomorrow may bring and I do not question her." She watched him tense and shake his head at the floor. "Neither should you." Silently she unfolded, realizing how badly her time lost charge was in need of comfort, not opposition. "I understand it is difficult, my friend. You have lived through what might only be for us. This may be your past, but when you made the choice to travel backwards it also became your present and your future became as uncertain for you as ours is for us." She smirked and reached for his hand. "In a way you may be luckier than all of us, _your _past may never actually occur. Any and all past discretions can therefore be forgiven, better-forgotten. I can think of no few people who would love to have that opportunity."

Bishop's eyes narrowed fractionally. "Don't patronize me Storm."

"I am not patronizing." Had she been anyone other than herself the smirk gracing her lips would have indicated otherwise.

"And I am being serious."

"As am I," she turned and went back to caring for her less cumbersome charges. "As is Gambit also, I assure you. He has never left anything to chance, now is not the time he would choose to do so."

"You have so much trust in him."

A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "Remy is very misunderstood." The unspoken question permeated the silence and for once she decided to give in and answer. "Given a choice Remy LeBeau has always chosen the lesser of two evils. I knew when he first found me, there is much good in him to trust. Something it has taken him long to come to terms with." She eyed Bishop over her shoulder. "Something you should have already realized, long ago when he found you. We have much in common, Bishop. There are days I am surprised by how _much_ we share in common."

"There was not much _good_ about the choices the Witness made." His stare moved fractionally from the concrete floor to the woman in front of him.

"Not the choices, the man. It is Remy's great misfortune to be constantly placed in situations where there is no _good_ choice." She spun to face him again and pointed one regal finger. "What makes him the man that he is, is his conscious effort to inflict the smallest amount of harm. Leaders on a battlefield are never faced with easy choices." Storm sighed and traced her fingers through one lacy fern. "Sadly, it seems a life that he was born and raised for, to lead. I assure you, it is not something he enjoys."

* * *

If asked what his favorite thing about being under Gambit's command was Logan would probably say: the beer. No kids, no reason to hide the alcohol. He flipped the cap off the Hefe Weiss and looked at the label—Muskoka. Good beer. Yah, it was a German beer kind of day, matched the German bitch sitting across the room. "Yah got some nerve, give yah that."

Raven offered a fluid shrug. "I was never a big fan of Cajun."

"Hmph." Logan took a pull and put the bottle on the table, aware he'd catch hell later for leaving a ring. "Tell me somethin', there a reason yer tryin' ta get yer ass packed outta this joint? Cuz lady, way I see it yer oughta be beggin' us for asylum." He grabbed his bottle and took another swig, eyeing Mystique as only a true predator could. "Asylum's certainly where ya belong."

"That's funny coming from somebody like you." She slid off the counter and marched decisively toward him, shifting slowly into the mirror image of the one and only Wolverine. "Not like ya don't have yer own head problems, bub."

The SNKT was distinctive and instantaneous, giving even the trained shape shifting assassin no time to react before three lethal claws were at her throat. "Ya may be the best at what you do, Mystique. But I'm the best at what I do, and I don't care what Gumbo says, you ain't worth the trouble."

"Did I interrupt the fun?" The markedly British accent floated over to him through the doorway and with one final SNKT the claws were gone and the figure before him was once more blue and female.

"Ain't interruptin' nothin', Betts." Logan finished off the last of the bottle, tossed it in the sink and grabbed for the fridge door once more. "Mystique here was just about to tell me why she's bein' extra bitchy today."

"And wouldn't that be something to hear."

Mystique grinned wickedly and turned away from the Canadian now that his head was buried in the fridge and was showing no more interest in her game. "Gee, Wolverine. You seem to have gotten the Ninja's butt floss all in a twist with expectation."

Betsy reached toward a cabinet and Logan grinned, she'd pulled this little trick on him once before and Mystique had no way of knowing what was coming. The dull thud of fist meeting skull was followed by the sharper sound of skin slapping skin. Knowing Betsy, probably a wrist grab twisted into a cross body restraint. "I am no ordinary Ninja, love. So let's leave _my _'butt floss' out of this and the pretty blue lady can tell us what's gone up _her_ ass sideways today?"

"Damn shadow walker."

Betsy snickered. "Remember that next time you decide to take a walk in the dark. Now I'm bored, entertain me." She released Raven in one fluid motion leaned casually against the wall as if she hadn't just bested Mystique in a brief round of hand to hand combat. Logan really did like the post Crimson Dawn Betsy a hell of a lot more than her predecessor, less psychic knife waving and much more ass whooping.

"Did your Angel fly the coop?"

Rather than rising to the bait Betsy flashed a winning smile right back at Raven. The two could probably have competed for coldest hearted on the team and Logan would have had difficulty choosing a winner. "When the bird is away the cat needs new prey."

"Clever." Raven grumbled. Logan snorted into his new beer. "And what is it I'm supposed to be telling the two of you that you don't already know?" Neither answered and Raven held her hands up like an innocent preschooler. "Am I not allowed to detest a man who has tried to defile my daughter on a regular basis for years now?"

"Considerin' ya assassinated yer own son on live national television…." Logan bared his teeth in a feral grin. "No."

"He was an abomination." Raven snarled back.

"Looking at his pedigree it certainly can't be a surprise." Betsy laughed and reached for an apple out of the bowl behind her. "You can't have expected the result of breeding two abominations to have been anything other than revolting." Her piercing violet stare snapped from the skin of the apple to Mystique's golden eyes. "But changing the subject only prolongs the conversation."

Taking his cue, Logan moved in on Mystique just like he had planned with Betts earlier, cornering her between the Ninja, the wall and the Wolverine. "Ya covered fer Phantasm in the Danger Room this mornin'. Ya certainly ain't given ta bein' the chivalrous type." Mystique started to open her mouth in protest, but was silenced once more by a SNKT. "Smelled shame and embarrassment all over the kid. Question is did ya do it ta piss Gumbo off, or you playin' some bigger game here?"

Logan watched Betsy out of the corner of his eye as she held her fist casually in front of her face, a purple dagger of energy appeared from seemingly out of nowhere. "She doesn't really have to tell us Logan."

He watched Mystique turn her gaze toward Psylocke long enough to catch sight of her Psychic Knife. A faint whiff of fear wafted off her for the briefest of moments, though she didn't show it. Logan had to give the witch credit, she was harder to read than half of Hank's library. "I am not stupid enough to try and do more than what I can to get under that low life's skin. Do you really think if I were up to something I'd be wasting my time here? That bastard has cut me off from all my contacts and left me with nothing. And he enjoys rubbing my nose it every chance he gets. I'm not grateful, and I don't care. So long as he keeps me prisoner here I have every right to make his life a living hell, and I fully intend to do just that." The Knife flickered out and Logan sheathed his claws.

_Think it's truth or bloody lies?_

"You keep tellin' yerself that, Raven." Logan swiped his beer back off the nearby windowsill and sauntered out the door. _Could be either, she got damn nervous when you pulled yer little head trick. Might just have been fear of being stabbed in the head. Course Raven's head is so messed, she might not know if she's tellin' the truth._

He got back the mental equivalent of a sigh, but he no longer cared. The only thing that went better with beer than pretzels was meditation, and the Wolverine was going to go do just that.

* * *

He let the door shut behind him, the ghost of a smile still on his face. It had been good see the look on her face when they got to joking around—like old times. He threw himself into his desk chair and whipped out his blackberry and pressed the button on the lower left edge. "Say a command" the phone woman ordered.

"Call"

"Please say the name of the person you'd like to call"

"Theoren"

"Did you say 'theeyorin'?"

"Yes" Remy laughed, the way the disembodied voice of his blackberry butchered his cousin's name killed him every time.

"Calling 'theeyorin'."

"Ha!" He covered his mouth quickly, knowing he'd get an answer after the first ring.

Sure enough. "Allo Remy. What you got?"

Remy kicked his feet up on the desk. "Why you always gotta t'ink it's business, coz?"

He heard the dry laugh on the other end of the line. "Cuz you ain't never called jus' t'check on de family."

"S'true." He pulled the jump drive out of his pocket for inspiration, twirling it idly between his fingers. "Got an eyes n' ears job, need somebody pretty level headed for it."

"Y' jus' eliminated half de guild." Remy laughed. "Eyes n' ears, hmm." He could practically hear the gears turning in Theoren's head. "It gotta be guild?"

That got Remy thinking. "Truth…non. Fact, probably better if it be an outside job. Plausible deniability 'n all dat."

"Plausible deniability?" Theoren asked. Remy could hear the gears in his head turning as clearly as he heard him start typing on a keyboard in the background. "Dis gon' be one o' _dem_ jobs, huh? Dat means we gon have to _pay_."

"Yup, figgered dat, _mon ami_."

"Who payin'?"

Remy mulled that thought over for a few seconds, mentally double checking account balances and outstanding debts faster than many could recall their bank's name. "I t'ink de team'll cover dis one. We got more'n enough 'rainy day' money sittin' aroun. Be easier than tryin' ta filter money out of de Guild accounts."

He heard Theoren breath a sigh of relief. "Bien. Where am I puttin' dese eyes n' ears?"

Remy stared up at the ceiling. "Russia. Need 'em on de ground in Russia."

"Russia be a big place, Remy. You got anyt'ing more specific dan dat?"

"Workin' on it, still tryin' ta translate dis _chouchoot_ I done got from de feds last night. F'right now I'd say Moscow be a good place to start. Hire it out, get 'em on de ground. I gonna be givin' dem a call soon's you have flight info uploaded. I'll give our _podna_ de details."

"_Bon_, de encrypted line?"

"Y'gotta ask?"

"Heh, guess not. I'll reset de encryption code on my end, upload it t'ya phone when I'm done."

"_Bien_. How is de family doin?"

Theoren laughed. "De _famille_ is doin' jus' fine. Probably better wit' you not bein' here no more."

"Ouch!" Remy laughed, his cousin's tone had taken the sting out of that one. Truth be told, he was probably right. Remy had been there right when they needed him. Survival was more than instinct for him, and he had gotten them through the worst of the storm—no pun intended. Now though, they needed somebody more like Theoren who could concentrate on more than just ensuring the bare necessities. Left to just Remy, they'd probably all still be bunkered down somewhere in Texas.

"Hahaha! Don't go takin' it personal, coz. You get de pictures Lapin sent?"

Remy's eyebrows knitted together for a second, and he started the laptop in his office for the first time ever. "_Non_, what he send pictures of?" He tapped impatiently on the screen while windows loaded.

"Boy, you have been outta de loop for awhile. His _gaienne_ had de baby, little boy."

"Christ!" Remy swore. "You kiddin'! Didn' even know de boy had a girlfriend. Ha! Lapin, a daddy. Now _dat's_ a scary thought."

"Jus' be glad it wasn' a girl. Dey was seriously gonna name it Katrina."

"Ugh. What dey name it?"

Silence for a moment. "Xavier Remy Lapin." Dead silence for another few seconds. "Never could convince dat boy you were no good. I'll resend de pictures. Bye coz." The line went dead.

Remy just sat there for a good few minutes, staring at his phone. "I'll be damned," he finally whispered. He pulled the laptop closer and logged into his e-mail. Sure enough, there were pictures—lots of pictures. "I'll be _damned_!" He laughed and opened one of the pictures of his cousin holding the baby. Lapin looked scared out of his wits and the baby was screaming.

"What are you laughing at, sugah?" He spun, surprised that Rogue had managed to come in without him noticing. "Sorry, the door was open and y' did say two hours…"

Remy waved his hand at her to let her know it was okay and went back to the pictures. "S'alright, _chere_. Lapin just had a baby, lookin' at de pictures he sent."

She sat on the floor next the desk, seeing as there was nowhere else in the room to sit. "Serious? That's a frightenin' thought."

"Y'ain't kiddin'. Check dis out." He turned the computer so she could see the picture currently on the monitor. It was a shot of Lapin trying desperately to change the baby's diaper, and obviously failing. "Now dat's priceless."

She giggled, covering her mouth with one gloved hand. "It is pretty good, but this isn't gettin' those files translated…"

"_Non_, y'right." He closed the files somewhat reluctantly. "He named him Xavier Remy Lapin." He turned to look Rogue in the eyes, needing to see some sort of reaction. Out of all of them he knew _she_ would understand. She was the only one who had ever met his family, the only one who really _got_ it.

"You miss them, don'tcha sugah?"

He nodded. Even Theoren had managed to bury the hatchet between them, he had finally realized it belonged six feet under with Etienne. As much as they treated him like the black sheep, they were still his family and N'awlins was still home. But as much as he wanted to be back there, he knew he belonged here. He was needed here. "Mebbe after dis situation calms down I'll go home for a visit."

Rogue smiled and nodded. "Maybe you should." Then she started laughing. "You realize this poor baby is doomed. He's either gonna take after his Daddy or his namesake. Either way he ain't got a chance."

She looked him straight in the eye for a second, then he started laughing too. "Dey were gonna name it Katrina if it had been a girl."

"Thank gawd fer small favors." Rogue rolled her eyes and stood. "Alright, Cajun. If we're gonna get down to work I'm gonna need a chair. Don't you own _any_ furniture?"


	4. Chapter 4

He realized belatedly that it had been over a week since he had actually set foot in direct sunlight, longer without his sunglasses. The sun could, apparently, be pretty damn bright. He cursed and raised an arm over his eyes for impromptu shade. On the far left of the lawn he noted Bishop trudging away from the greenhouse, looking like a man who had just failed on an important mission. His mind instantly catalogued it, noting he should probably speak with his Stormy later. Whatever was up with the pup lately, seemed 'Ro had become his new confidante, which could be a good thing or could be a very bad thing depending on what it was that weighed so heavily on Bishop's soul these days.

A light breeze stirred his hair, blowing some of it past his arm and into his face. Another mental note, he needed a haircut. He honestly didn't think his hair had been this long since he was about twelve when he had refused to cut it for a full year just to irk his _pere_. The thought sent a miniscule twinge through the part of him that he recognized as his soul, thoughts of Jean-Luc still somewhat too painful to bear. National disasters and other equally unanticipated passings had taken away Remy's chance and right to grieve and now it just seemed unreasonable to weep for a man who had been dead over a year.

He made his way slowly toward the dock, Spuyten Dyvil Cove being the obvious choice for his target to spend free time. The boat house still stood on the edge of the lake, in a way. Gaping charred holes in the walls laid bare testament to the fate of the former inhabitants. Remy could still replay the message he had received from Stormy that day, only days after his own father's death: "There has been a horrible accident." Personally, Remy wanted to tear the damn building down. It reminded him of how vulnerable they all were in the end. After everything they had all survived: being kidnapped by intergalactic terrorists, infected with life threatening illnesses by mad geneticists, attacked by bigoted supremacists (mutant and human), trapped by enormous robots and tortured by psychic entities on power trips all it really took to end it all was some punk kid trespassers, some gasoline and a match. Logan, however, wouldn't let it go. It still smelled like Jeanie underneath the soot, or so he claimed. The scent was all he had, all any of them had. There hadn't been any bodies left to bury.

"Yah can stop tryin' ta sneak up on me anytime now, Gumbo." Logan sat perched, as usual, on the dock. An empty beer bottle floated nearby where it had presumably landed after rolling into the water. "Yah gotta get out more, yer gettin' that sick smell of something that's been cooped up too long."

"_Merci_." Remy bit off the statement and plunked himself gracelessly down next to the Canuck on the dock, almost wishing he had a beer bottle in hand to match the one slowly floating away.

"Thought ya were workin' on that intel."

Remy shrugged, "Left Rogue with it. Can't make no sense outta anything on dose files. Don' speak de language."

Logan grunted, tipping his hat back so he could look Gambit full in the eyes. "Think that's smart, leavin' the kid ter figure it out."

"Dat's yer problem, Wolverine." Remy flashed one of his very own patented devil may care smiles, then turned to look out over the slowly lapping water. He let his voice go husky, a suggestive tone layering over the accent. The result, he was aware, bordered on indecent in the effect it was known to have on some, mostly of the opposite sex. "Roguey ain' been a 'kid' for some time now, _mon ami_."

The sound Logan released hovered somewhere between a snicker and a disgusted snort. "Ya gonna start this shit again? Don't either one of you know when to just quit?"

They sat in silence for a few minutes, the question hanging uncomfortably between them. Finally Remy turned slowly, eyeing the boathouse. "Should tear dis damn t'ing down. Ain't doin' nuttin' but causin' an eye sore."

"Point taken." Logan rolled his shoulders and tilted his head, letting off one loud 'pop'. "What I meant was, is it a smart idea lettin' her decipher all that info. You know how she gets about 'protectin' everybody. You sure she's gonna give it all up?"

"She will."

"What makes you so sure?"

Gambit shrugged. "If dose files say what I t'ink dey say, she gon' be too horrified _not_ to tell me everyt'ing."

Logan nodded. "And if they don't?"

"Den Col. Fury cheated me. Which means Val Cooper an' I are gonna be havin' a nice little chat wit' de ole bastard."

A deep chuckle escaped Logan's throat and Remy joined in. "Gotta hand it to ya, Cajun. You sure know how to play them."

"Speakin' of playin' em, _mon ami_, you have dat little discussion wit' Raven?"

The snort sufficed for an answer. "She _really_ don't like you, bub. That's fer damn sure."

"Well, I ain' exactly a card carryin' member of de Mystique fanclub dese days either. She playin' some fool game or I got worries, _mon ami_? Dat's all I need to know." Remy locked his elbows and leaned back on his arms, releasing some of the tension in his back. He watched Logan pull a cigar from his chest pocket and chomp the end. Something about the lines of his body right at that moment gave him an unsettled feeling, like waiting for something big to come over the horizon but not knowing what that something might be.

Logan shook his head, then looked Remy right in the eye. "If she's got something up 'er sleeve other than the usual bullshit I can't say. Neither can the Ninja." For the merest second Gambit saw red, but Logan held his hand up. "She came to me, I didn't pull Betts in on this one. You may not like her but the girl ain't stupid. She knows, well as I do, that if you go down the whole house of cards goes tumblin' down with ya." Dead silence sat heavy between them for the moment, leaving Logan to break it. "She knows there ain't no place fer people like us to go if that happens. She came to me, looking to check Blue, I let her think it was her own idea."

It was not ideal, but it was satisfactory. The history between Psylocke and Gambit was complicated in it's own way, something neither was comfortable with. Tolerance was the key to a maintained coexistence within the mansion for both. Remy refused to forgive the attempted mind rape while he had been in a rather pleasantly induced coma. Betsy refused to forgive the loss of Warren's first wings in a rather unpleasantly induced massacre. Meanwhile, Betsy could not ignore how Remy had gone out of his way to save her from Apocalypse. He could not ignore how she had defended him against the late and unlamented Victor Creed's slander. Add in the Crimson Dawn and Gambit's new position in the team hierarchy, it just made for an emotional mish-mash of confusion best left to stew untended.

He suddenly noticed Wolverine eying him rather awkwardly and realized he must have actually dozed off on the dock for a minute, mid conversation. "_Merde_." He shook himself slightly. "Dat's fine, Logan. Jus' try to keep de details between us."

"Sure, whatever you say, Cajun." Gambit was aware of how Logan was watching him as he lifted himself stiffly to his feet, like a hunter stalking wounded prey. "Do us all a favor, though, would ya."

"What's dat?"

"Kick Mississippi outta yer room and try to get at least four hours of shut eye." Gambit shot him a glare, which Logan intentionally misinterpreted. "Or don't kick 'er out. Not like you could do much in your condition anyway." He laughed. "You fall on your ass during a training session I ain't gonna waste my time pickin' you up. You don' do any of us any good unconscious."

"I'll keep dat in mind." He couldn't help but laugh himself, turning back toward the mansion. Of course, chances were he'd get back to his room to find that Rogue had either a) found something important in those files or b) gotten frustrated with the job and smashed something he had preferred in one piece. She had been given specific instructions that she could _not_ smash the computer, but that meant everything else was fair game if the language barrier irked her temper, which was more than possible.

* * *

Amber liquid splashed over ice was a quiet way to relax after a fairly stressful 24 hours, or try to at least. The woman on the telescreen in front of him did nothing to detract from the tension he could feel throughout his body. Her pinched face and rather severe blond haircut did a lot to help maintain the no nonsense image she strove for. He sucked in the Scotch through his teeth and set the glass on his desk, returning the glare he was receiving with the one eye he could use to do so. "To what do I owe the pleasure of speaking with Ms. Valerie Cooper today?"

"Spare me the sarcasm, Fury. This is not my idea of a social call either. D.C. wants to know if the intel on our friend's project has been properly passed along."

Nick fury sat on his desk, stared at the screen for all of ten seconds, then started to laugh. "You kidding me, Val? After all the work we put in on this, your pals back home can't trust me to carry out my own plan."

The face on the screen snickered back. "I'm just doing my job, Colonel. I can't help it, we're getting a lot of heat and the media is starting to pick up on more than just what we're leaking. The NSA wants to be sure that the package was delivered and wants an ETA on when we can expect results."

Fury snorted into his scotch and took another pull. "You want me to hold their hands and leave a trail of breadcrumbs for them to follow too?" He was so tired of the bureaucratic nightmare that had become his government, tired of the top secret documents that now needed to be filed in triplicate with the correct agencies to ensure their existence would be correctly denied. Most of it made no sense, and Valerie Cooper, his own personal liaison, seemed to have gone over to the dark side on him, and he couldn't figure out when or where or why. The burst of anger caused him to slam his glass down on the desk before he even truly registered doing it. "You're talking about giving a group of vigilante mercenaries top security clearance documents and hoping they do what we're not asking! You expect me to predict when a group of people barely above the level of terrorists are going to do something? And you want me to guarantee they'll behave?"

To her credit, Val didn't jump at the outburst. A finger appeared on the screen, attempting to either pierce Fury or pin him in place. It did neither effectively. "The X-Men are not terrorists. Government sanctioned, no, but not terrorists. And I'm not asking you to predict or guide, I'm asking you to use some god damned judgment and experience to tell me what to tell the people here in DC before they decide to pull the plug on this whole thing. We're trying to prevent a war, Colonel."

Fury suddenly felt very old, and out of place. It had been so much easier years ago: find the terrorists, interrogate them, dispose of them. Now, the lines between friend and foe were so blurred he felt punch drunk. Even he had to admit it was hard to look at somebody like Wolverine as an enemy, when in truth he'd probably feel more comfortable with Logan at his back in a battle than most of his own operatives. Hell, he'd even trust the double dealing Cajun before most of his own crew. It made things painfully difficult, trying to avoid letting emotions interfere with business, when in truth the 'mutant terrorists' you had been taught to fight really weren't that bad. He looked down at the floor and composed himself before looking back at the screen. "I gave them everything they need to start putting the pieces together. If I'd given much more Gambit would've gotten suspicious and aborted. This is an intelligent team, I have no doubt they will start piecing together the puzzle and we should start seeing results within a week, two at most. Tell the stiffs in DC to sit on it till then and lay low. You know as well as I do, if Gambit starts sniffing around like we want and we trail too close he'll know, he'll pull the plug and he'll lay low. If we're gonna kill two birds on this we have to let them work it out unimpeded. You tell Stryker that means to back the fuck off, if he screws this one up on me I will personally ensure his court marshal is long, slow and painfully personal."

Valerie snickered. "That will do for now. When do you plan on reporting in person?"

"When the shit starts to hit the fan, Val. I think you can live without me until then."

A silent nod and the screen went blank. Fury made his way back toward the wet bar on the side of his office, thankful he was here on the Heli-Carrier rather than sitting in DC. That would happen soon enough. For now he wanted to enjoy what little freedom he still had.


	5. Chapter 5

_AN: _Taking some constructive criticism (much appreciated, by the way) into consideration, I've started fixing some of the small things that have been pointed out before moving on to the next chapter. First and foremost, section breaks. Many of you have pointed out that they would be helpful, and I agree. In fact, I agreed while writing all of this, and for some reason upon uploading the chapters...all the break symbols mysteriously vanished. That being said, I have started inserting line breaks into the chapters (where they were originally *shrug*). Second, some of you have pointed out that you're not always sure which character you're being presented with at a given time. Part of that is done on purpose, for example the second section of this chapter. I am working on trying to build up some shock and awe, and I'm trying to do with with a cast of characters that one would not typically see grouped in a story together. Marvel has created a universe, that I am dutifully trying to preserve within this story. As a universe...you never know who might show up. However, there are points where I am now realizing that I don't say who a character is when I probably should, which is simply my own lack of 'outsight' (opposite of insight) as I call it. So I'm going to make it a point to a) correct that error and b) avoid making that mistake in future chapters. Never let it be said that suggestions were not welcome, and thank you for making me aware of them. Also, thank you for all the praise, I am glad that my hours of editing (though apparently not entirely enough) have paid off and that you have enjoyed what I have written so far. So, enjoy some more!

* * *

_96% проб ДНК оказались жизнеспособными. На данный момент проект, похоже, увенчалась успехом. Образцы будут продолжать быть выбраны для дальнейшего изучения._

She stared blankly at the words on the screen in front of her, letting her head rest like a leaden weight on one hand. A pencil twirled idly in her other hand, occasionally stopping its dance to tap erratically on the notepad below. She had _most _of it: "96% of the DNA samples have proven blank. At this point the project appears to be a success. Samples will continue to be chosen for further study."

Yet another pencil snapped in two with an audible crack and she slammed her now empty fist down on the notepad, leaving an accidental indentation in the soft pine of the desk underneath. "Dang it!" Rogue moved the pad and rubbed two fingers over the impression, as if she could erase it away with a touch like she did so many other things.

The door behind her creaked open and she jumped, only to find the man whose desk she had now permanently marred walking toward her. "Find something, _chere_?"

She let out a disgusted sigh and passed him the legal pad, slouching back in his black leather chair. "That's most of it, sugah. Not that it seems all that scandalous." She watched as he rifled through her pages of notes.

He peered at the notes, turning them sideways and cocking his head in the opposite direction. "Ya handwritin' is atrocious, _chere_! Anybody ever done told you dat?"

"Har, har, har." She mocked him, and snatched the pad back in one fluid motion while pushing the pieces of pencil still remaining on the desk into the trash basket at her feet with their kin, who had suffered a similar demise at her hands already. "A lot of it is just financial stuff, like you'd find in a company dossier." He looked on intently as she flipped to a page in her notes. She cleared her throat and adjusted her posture so she was sitting completely upright. "The third quarter earnings reached their target of 23% growth over the last fiscal quarter. If fourth quarter earnings meet the projection then the company will stand to produce a total gross…" she let the snotty voice she had adopted for the reading trail off following the Cajun's apparent attention. "It's this last stuff that's gotta be a gold mine, only mention of what this company actually _does_, but they make it so sketchy. Feels like tryin' ta track a ghost."

Remy grabbed the notes back and read the final few sentences to himself, running his finger along with the text. "Rogue, y'missin' a word here." He stabbed his index finger at the blank space that ended the first sentence of the entry.

"Ah know…" she shrugged. "I can't for the life of me figger out what it might be. It ain't somethin' that's in my vocabulary." She let her body slump back into the chair, fingers tapping out a staccato rhythm on the arm rests.

Remy's eyes glanced dubiously at her over the pages. "Kinda an important word, Rogue. You got no idea what it might be?"

She felt her body stiffen in response to the accusation lurking under the benign tone. Remy thought she was hiding something. "No clue." The deadpan statement fell between the two, initiating a staring match that Rogue knew she didn't stand a chance of winning.

Yet, for some reason unknown to her, Remy backed down first. "Sorry, _chere_. Y'done some good work here. _Merci bien_." He nodded, and she mirrored the gesture. "If y'don' mind though, I be t'inkin' some sleep might be a good idea…" he finished the sentence by sweeping his arm toward the door.

Rogue let her eyes close briefly, inhaling and exhaling deeply in relief before standing. Whoever, or whatever, had put the message into the damn Cajun's brain that he needed to start taking care of himself deserved a very large hug. "No problem, sugah." She sauntered toward the doorway, her mind pondering what she needed to get done most urgently with the remaining hours in the day. Her hand was inches from the doorknob when the sound of Remy clearing his throat made her pause and turn.

He was leaning against the desk, hair hanging in his face and those damned devil eyes shining out from beneath the tendrils. Rogue knew the stance well, this was Remy's 'I'm apologizing in advance for what I'm about to say' posture. Nothing good ever came out of his mouth when he looked at her like that. Instinctively her hands found her hips, bracing herself against whatever was about to spew from Gambit's mouth. "Y'could always ask Piotr," he paused, scuffing one toe against the floor. "He might be able t'translate dat word."

_Leave it to Remy LeBeau to never let a girl's expectations down._ She thought, letting the instinctual tension flow through her body, clenching muscles painfully tight before allowing the feeling to dissipate like the morning fog. Soundlessly she pivoted back to the door and let herself into the hallway, making a forceful effort to not slam the door hard enough to shatter it. She could not believe he dared to ask her to use her powers like that, to delve into the depths of her muddied subconscious and pull Colossus' ghost up like some sort of tool to fix their problems. He, like everybody else, failed to understand what it was like to dig into her mind for the ghosts of psyches past. Once their essence passed into her mind, any friendship they had possessed was null and void. The victim became the prisoner, and she the reluctant warden. The fact that she would gladly grant all of them freedom if only she knew how didn't seem to matter, and she didn't have the heart to blame the crowd that called her mind home for hating her so intensely. That was what made using their thoughts and gifts all the more wrong, especially the ghosts who didn't have bodies to go home to. It was worse than mind rape, it was grave robbing, and it was something that Rogue could not find the heart to do to anybody, least of all someone who had once been more than just simply a friend.

* * *

By the time he stepped off the plane in Moscow his left hand had developed a rather significantly obnoxious twitch that stemmed from the fact that it was not holding a cigarette. It hadn't held a cigarette in over 22 hours, and it was damn unhappy with that particular situation. This was the true reason why he tried not to fly, though he passed it off as environmental activism in order to impress women. They tended to respond to that more proactively than they did a nicotine addiction. Strolling down the walkway toward customs he took in the scene around him. Plenty of businessmen and blondes, just the way he liked it. He adjusted his necktie slightly in an effort to control the twitching and mentally reminded himself there was a lovely carton of smokes waiting for him at his hotel room…assuming Theoren hadn't forgotten. There would be hell to pay if he _had _forgotten, that was damn sure.

After what had seemed to be hours he finally reached customs and fished his lovingly crafted passport out of his blazer pocket. It was something that had only taken mere hours for the thieves to furnish, including stamps from visits to countries around the globe such as Fiji. For some reason he had insisted on Fiji, a businessman such as himself needed to take vacations every now and again, and he liked thinking that at least his fake persona for this particular job had actually made it to Fiji. Fiji was warm, something Russia in November was devastatingly lacking. A reaction shiver went up his spine at the thought of what awaited him past the protection of these walls.

He reached the intake desk that he had lined up for and looked up in time to see blue eyes, blonde hair and just a slight peek of cleavage. Perhaps Russia wasn't going to be so bad. Silently she reached her slim hand out for his passport, which he graciously handed over. "You always so friendly, love?" He winked and flashed his most winning smile.

"Your business in Russia Mister….Vitmore?" she asked after glancing briefly at his picture.

"Unfortunately it is business, love. Company meeting I'm afraid, although you're welcome to join me and maybe make it a pleasure trip…." She rolled her eyes, which meant either her English was good, or she had gotten the same proposition often enough that she could tell from his tone that he was up to no good as far as she was concerned. That was good too, not that he wouldn't enjoy a good romp, but his identity as a successful businessman, one used to getting his way everywhere he went, was holding up.

"How long vill you be staying in our country?" she asked, simultaneously checking items off on his intake form.

"Long enough to show you a good time…" she frowned and he laughed. "About two weeks."

She nodded, "and you vill be staying…."

"At the Metropol Hotel…" she checked off the last item on the list and reached for the stamp. "suite 4, second floor." He arched his eyebrows suggestively, making the poor suffering Irina (as her name tag informed him in two languages) glare at him under her fringe of bangs before stamping his passport somewhat more violently than he thought the job required.

She handed the red booklet back to him almost grudgingly and muttered "Velcome to Russia, enjoy your stay. Next!" Pete Wisdom chuckled to himself under his breath. Yes, despite having work to do, he was planning on enjoying his time in Russia. Perhaps Irina wouldn't be on the list of special suite guests, but he was fairly sure there would be time to find a beauty or two to impress before this job was finished. And with the Thieves Guild footing the bill, he most certainly had the wherewithal to impress any lady of his choosing. Maybe working for the American Thieves on the side wasn't such a bad gig after all. The government never let him have this kind of fun. He approached the sliding glass doors, frosted over from the elements to prevent his view of the driver and car that had best be waiting for him. He hitched his over coat a bit higher on his shoulders to pull it tighter around him and firmed his grip on the satchel he had been carrying, his only luggage. _The queen never made you freeze off your goolies either._ With that last less than pleasant thought he took a deep breath, held it and stepped onto the activating mat to open the first set of sliding doors.

* * *

The sunlight streaming in through the large bay windows in this parlor had always been ideal for two things: napping and reading. The result had been a somewhat half-hearted conversion of the parlor into a library complete with plush chairs and one lonely plant that Jubilee had named "Boy George" what seemed to be a lifetime ago. Bobby wondered if he was the only current mansion occupant who remembered that the plant even had a name. Looking at the wilting leaves he wondered if he was the only one who remembered that poor Boy George existed. With a thought an icicle appeared between two fingers, and Bobby sunk it into the soil in the pot, trusting that it would suffice for a drink as it melted. That done, he turned to the only other person in the room.

Nick lounged in a large overstuffed cream chair, with his feet up on a mismatched ottoman. The book in his hands, a scientific thriller, Bobby recognized as being supplied to the library by Longshot almost a decade ago. Nick's thick black hair and the book hid his face, though Bobby wasn't entirely concerned with seeing the kid's expression. He walked over and kicked Nick's feet off the ottoman, making him jump. Easily Bobby slid himself onto the footstool, making himself comfortable. "You ask a lot of questions, kiddo. You're looking to find something." Bobby hadn't been asking a question, he wasn't expecting an answer.

The burly young adult shrugged and readjusted himself, one eye appeared over the cover of the paperback. "Curiosity isn't a crime."

"No," Bobby formed another icicle between his fingers with little more than a thought and began twirling it idly, watching it go back and forth. "But there's a difference between somebody being curious, and somebody who's digging." The brown eye appeared behind a thin fringe of black hair at the comment, and Bobby took the advantage by locking his gaze on Ricochet's. "The X-Men have never really been fond of diggers."

Nick placed the book face down in his lap and nodded his understanding. "Look, I've read all the files, I know the history. I might be the only person here who has…"

"Because most of us _lived _it!" Bobby interrupted, his whole fist going to frost as he slammed it down on the footstool. "Don't you dare sit there and get all high and mighty just because you _read_ about some of the stuff we've done and seen. Kid, I was there when Magneto tried to destroy the world, I was there when Jean died, I was there when she came back to life, and I traveled to alternate dimensions and other universes. You can read the files, you can watch the footage, but until you've gone toe to toe with Apocalypse or been sent to the Mojoverse _don't_ sit there and patronize a veteran and don't go asking questions that have nothing to do with the present or getting the job done."

Although he looked satisfactorily mewed, Nick still held an arrogant gleam in his eyes. Bobby didn't like it. "What if the skeletons still left in peoples' closets are gonna get me killed, huh? Wouldn't be the first." Bobby felt his inner core going cold, and tried to hold back the urge to ice up and just deck the punk. "I mean, what? You leader man's guard dog now? I got a right to know everything I'm getting myself into by joining this team."

"Indeed you do." A familiar voice floated over from a darkened corner, where Hank McCoy had apparently been sitting unnoticed. "You also have every right to know that your privacy is under certain protections here. When you are ready to divulge all your own secret information Mr. Papavisilios, I am sure that your teammates will consider doing the same. However, until that time arrives it may be wise to take Robert's advice to heart. For, getting the Wolverine to confess to his own dark past may indeed cost you nothing short of your own beloved cardiac organ."

Bobby watched Nick shake his head, climb out of the large chair and stalk out of the room much like he probably had a few years ago after a good parental scolding. "What do you think, Hank?" Bobby asked, turning to his long time friend.

Hank sighed and made his way toward the now abandoned chair. "I am afraid I do not know what to think. While I would like to trust our new recruits, I understand the danger in that." He paused and rubbed his chin with one blue furry thumb. "Though I must admit, the boy does ask a lot of questions."

Bobby nodded. "And for all they act like they can't stand each other, he has been spending a lot of time with Mystique lately."

"So do you think it is merely her virulent influence upon the boy, or that there is something much more devious afoot?"

Bobby shrugged. "Donno. Right now all I can say is that the kid just asks too many damn questions about things that could very likely start arguments at pretty poor times." He took the book that Nick had left behind, _The Cellular Energist_, he noted briefly. He handed it back to Hank, who placed it lovingly on it's shelf. "If I didn't know better I'd swear part of his mutation is the ability to start fights." Looking toward the doorway over Hank's shoulder where Nick had exited he noted Rogue storming down the hallway. "And there goes our knockout queen, looking like she just left a brawl." She stopped in the entry, and Bobby nodded to her. "Gambit still breathing?"

"Less'n you know somethin' Ah don't, sugah." She turned to Hank and handed him a piece of paper. "Beast, Ah was hopin' ya could give a girl a hand here. Ah cain't, fer the life of me, figger out what in tarnation this word translates to in English. Ah thought ya might have a computer program, or…"

Hank held up a hand to stall her, and removed his spectacles with a flourish. "That will not be necessary, my dear. This is Russian for 'viable', a medical term that I ran into fairly frequently during my work on the Legacy vaccine."

"Viable," Rogue muttered to herself while Bobby and Hank stared at her. She seemed to be lost in a world of her own, staring at nothing across the room. "96% viable, the samples are good. The project is a success…."

"That sounds like good news." Bobby offered, watching Rogue slowly go white.

She turned and looked at him, her eyes finally finding purchase as they locked with his. "No, sugah. Ah got a feelin' this is _bad_ news."

"Well, what project are you referring to?" Hank asked, peering curiously at her.

"Ah don't know, darlin'. But anytime somebody the swamprat investigates has a success, it always spells trouble for us. Dang it!" She stomped her left foot, slightly harder than she probably intended, and Bobby had to reach out to steady poor Boy George before he met his maker after meeting the floor. Hank arched an eyebrow at her, and Bobby graced her with a confused look. "Now Ah gotta go wake 'im up, he'll kill me if Ah don't tell him alla this right away. An' here Ah thought he was finally gonna get some sleep!" With that she turned and sped back down the hallway back toward her point of origin, which if Bobby had to guess, was Gambit's suite.

He looked over his shoulder at Hank. "You don't think they're dating _again_, do you?"

Henry McCoy sighed, then chuckled. "For the sake of the property and the cost of all the repairs that are usually part and parcel with Gambit and Rogue's romantic endeavors I certainly hope that is not the case. Yet, Love is a spirit of all compact of fire. William Shakespeare."

"Please don't give them ideas!" Bobby moaned. "The last thing we need is them burning down the house….again."


	6. Chapter 6

"Tante Mattie, what be all dat noise?" He asked, eyeing her over a big steaming bowl of her famous jambalaya.

She hummed softly as she strained the rice over the kitchen sink. "Oh dat jus' be de neighbors again, chile."

"Damn dey be LOUD!"

"Remy LeBeau, you watch yo mout' fore Mattie has to teach it somethin'." Lapin and Henri snickered at him from across the table and he stuck his tongue out at them both using the distraction to snatch a piece of fresh cornbread out of the basket sitting in the center of the battered metal table. "An' you put dat piece of bread back right dis instant. Dere be no t'ievin' food at mah table, boy."

"Yes Tante Mattie," he scowled, replacing the still warm bread. But the banging kept on, and he could've sworn the neighbors were calling his name. Although he knew better than to get up from her table without asking to be excused, Remy couldn't help but be curious. He swung himself around and planted his feet on the floor…only to find himself blinking at the door to his bedroom at the mansion. Split seconds later he realized that the banging in his dream was coming from that self same door. He shook his head violently once, then twice, dislodging cobwebs that never should have been there to begin with. Slowly he stood, allowing muscle to stretch while he gained his equilibrium, marveling at the fact that he had been having a _good_ dream that didn't involve blood or murder or sewers…yet.

"Ya in there Swamprat?"

"_Merde_," he muttered, reaching blindly for a T-shirt or some kind of clothing to cover the upper half of himself. He didn't like the idea of chancing another broken nose just for answering the door half naked. Remy always fancied himself a fast learner when it came to Rogue's mannerisms, though his teammates would certainly claim otherwise. "F'once 'm tryin' ta do what you done tol' me!" He attempted to snarl at that damn woman pounding on his door. He winced as the sound of his voice reached his ears, realizing it sounded very similar to a whine. Grabbing hold of something that was cloth but wasn't his sheets, he threw it over his head and staggered to the door. After a few seconds of fighting with the doorknob he managed to wrench it open. "Whatchu want?"

"Now that's a fashion statement!" Rogue giggled in reaction to his appearance. Curiously, Remy glanced down at what he was wearing, noting it was a pair running shorts that he'd meant to put in the laundry last week. Deciding it really didn't matter he shrugged.

"Dis what you woke me up for? Comment on m'wardrobe, chere?"

"Viable," Rogue simply replied, crossing her arms over her chest and assuming her patented self satisfied smirk. The word failed to make purchase in his sleep fogged mind, and he just stared at her blankly as way of response. "The word, Remy!" Rogue shouted, and stared back at him disbelievingly. His face and his brain felt frozen, and Rogue, he was pretty sure, had finally lost the remainder of her own mind as well. "From the translation…." Still nothing. "The one I couldn't figure out…."

"96% viable…." Once his mouth muttered the words it was as if someone upstairs had slapped his mind awake with a nine iron. "Fuck!" He stared at her momentarily like a deer caught in headlights. "Dat cain't be no good."

"Exactly what I thought. When I figgered it out it was like a chill crept up my back and somethin' froze in my blood."

"Tol' ya to stop hangin' around with Iceman."

Rogue returned his deadpan stare. "Har-har-har. What are we gonna do?"

Remy thought about it for a minute, then gently grabbed her by the shoulder and turned her back toward the hall. "_We_ gon' do nuttin', chere. I am gonna talk to my contact in Moscow when he lands, then –"

"Remy…."

"_Qui est-ce?_" He shouted, feeling the annoyance seeping out through every pore.

"Yer guild contact should already be on the ground, didn't Theoren tell you he was flyin' out yesterday?"

Remy bounced those words around inside his head for a few seconds. "_Non_, he said he'd get somebody out dere dis mornin', den you worked on de translation for me…"

"That was yesterday, Cajun." Rogue stated.

She may as well have dumped a bucket of ice water on him. "Y'mean I've been asleep fer a whole day?" He shouted, turning to stare wild eyed out one of his windows before ripping the shorts off from around his neck and getting down to business looking for a real shirt. "What de hell has everybody been doin' all day?"

Rogue snickered. "Pretty much what we been trained and scheduled to do. Shockingly the house didn' fall down without you micromanagin' it to bits, an' nobody even got _killed_. It was amazin!"

"Now look who ain' funny." Remy grumbled, plopping himself down in his desk chair, shirt forgotten. "Cerebro!"

"Good afternoon, Gambit." Absently he wondered why the Professor had programmed the computer's voice to be so eerily friendly. At times it was unnerving.

"Afternoon?" he mouthed to Rogue, who only stuck her tongue out and shrugged in response. _Damn stubborn woman_, he silently cursed her. "Cerebro I need you to dial the phone number Theoron inputted into the system yesterday. Please encrypt transmission and monitor the line for interference."

"Certainly Gambit." There was a pause while the computer dialed up the direct line to Moscow, during which Remy violently shooed Rogue back out of his room. "Your line is connected Gambit, have a pleasant rest of your day."

"T'anks." Remy mumbled, turning toward the display screen on his computer. Because this wasn't a video connection, the screen would stay blank, but it felt odd having a phone conversation into nowhere. It was one of the reasons he had never taken to using a Bluetooth. He was still somewhat convinced that it was a tool used by schizophrenics to help them appear normal in the everyday world. He heard the door close behind him and didn't bother turning to see if Rogue had decided to stay or go since it honestly didn't matter one way or the other what she overheard.

"Ello." Came the voice through the computer speakers.

"_Bon jour_ my friend." Remy smirked, "an' how is Moscow treating you today?"

There was a pause on the line. "Pretty bloody awful, to be honest. You have any idea how fuckin' cold this place is?"

"Pretty sure what I'm payin' ya will more than make up for a little frostbite, _mon ami_."

A snort carried through the speakers. "Easy fer a body who ain't riskin' loosin' his little mate in the cold to say, but yah. So what _am _I doin' out in the middle of the former Soviet Union?"

"Well, I be needin' some information and I ain't in a position to be gettin' it on my own, so you gonna be doin' a little hands on research for me."

There was decent pause. "Research my bloody ass." Gambit felt a grin grow on his face. He was pretty sure he liked this particular contact. "A body don't get flown to Russia in the middle of winter to do _research_. I ain't no stupid git, mate."

"_Non_, 'parently not. You're investigatin' a company for me. See dey interested in sellin', which would be fine by me _homme – _cept I been hearin' some pretty nasty rumors about some 'side projects' dey got goin' on."

The voice was silent for almost a full minute. "You flew me half way across the world so you could avoid a bloody PR nightmare?" The hollowness of the statement carried through the line. "You're loony."

"Per'aps, _mais_ I be de one writin' de checks, _non_? I t'ink I'm entitled to some eccentricities. De company be pretty deep underground, y' gone have to dig to get some contacts and intel."

"That's not a problem." Remy heard a deep exhale. "This company got a name?"

The grin stretched into a smile and idly Remy tapped his fingers on the desktop by way of a victory dance. The little fish had taken the bait, now it just needed to lure the bigger fish out of hiding. "Mutragenics."  
"Never 'eard of 'em."

"Most people haven't."

"What exactly am I lookin' for?"

"I wan know 'bout anyt'ing suspicious, anyt'ing dat jus' don' seem right. My contact tol' me dat you were good wit' y' gut. Fin' dem, find out eveyt'ing y' can. I be touchin' base in tree days, my financiers be needin' answers by den."

He heard his contracted employee choke audibly. "You ain' askin' for much, are you? Jesus!" There was another long pause. "Alright, I'll let you know what I got in three days, but you ain' bein' very specific, which means you get what you bloody get."

"Jus' remember, de deeper you dig de bigger your check's gone get." Remy pressed the escape button on his keyboard at that, disconnecting the call.

"Yah didn't tell him bout any of the stuff we found." Rogue suddenly protested from behind him.

"Y' right, _chere_. I didn'."

Her left foot began tapping the floor erratically, sometimes Remy wondered if she even had control of her reactions. "Why in the blazes not?"

There was something in the look on her face this time that kept him securely gripping the handle that her comments typically made him fly off of, something that he hadn't seen before: curiosity. "Y' actually wanna know, don' ya?" Rogue tersely nodded the affirmative. Realizing that for this one time she was not questioning his authority, his motives, his methods or his ethics but actually attempting to understand shocked him deeply enough that he motioned for her to take a seat. For the first time since he had known this annoyingly stubborn woman she was acknowledging that she did not, in fact, possess the answers to all of life's mysteries within her coiled fists. Rather she was striving to learn not only what it was that Remy LeBeau did to work his magic, but why he did it. The why was something that he had yearned to impart on her so many times before that he found himself somewhat skeptical that she would grasp the sometimes counter intuitive reasoning behind his methods.

Much as she tried to deny it, Rogue was a battering ram, hit first and think later. Remy, on the other hand, lived the life of a true and trained thief. Smoke and mirrors did more than keep you alive, they were tools that could be used to manipulate everything around you: the people, the environment, and most importantly outcomes and opportunities. A thief who couldn't ensure a perfect heist was not worthy of the title 'thief'. Of course, smoke and mirrors backfire. Therein lay the risk and the excitement, the moment when you have to trust that you have truly judged everything correctly. More than anything else, being a thief was about TRUST, which Rogue lacked in ample quantities.

At this moment, he was trusting that he had read her expression correctly and that the time was finally right to reveal to her a sliver of the information that he had longed to give her years ago if she had only cared. "It's simple, _chere_. My ground informant, he ain' guild, which means I can't trust dat he gone keep a secret. So I ain' gone give him a secret. If dese people as bad as you an' me t'ink den we don' wan' dem knowin' dat somebody onto deir little game. I don' tell him what I lookin' for an' he can' tell dem what I lookin' for. If de left hand don' know what de right han' be doin' den both hands covered by 'plausible deniability'." He watched her nod slowly as she puzzled her way through what he had just told her.

"So what you're sayin is that you don't trust this guy not to screw up. Which means that you aren't gonna tell him what your suspicions are because then he might rat us out if he gets caught."

If it didn't mean a guaranteed coma, Remy could've kissed her. "Zactly! Plus, it also gives me an idea of how 'top secret' all dis stuff really be. If dey not really tryin' hard to keep it under wraps den it probably not as big as all dat. But, if my guy lands himself in some serious trouble…" he watched her eyes widen as she caught on. "Bingo! We found ourselves some bad guys to take care of."

"He's bait!" Rogue stood and stared at him in a way that he was pretty sure meant she was either awestruck, dumbstruck or about to strike him. "Y'all're usin him to try and stir up a hornet's nest without even warning him."

He was starting to feel like the latter of the three options was most likely. "He was warned when he picked up a Guild contract, chere. Nobody who ain' spectin' trouble ever gon' make it to the level where we'd hire 'em. He's gettin' paid by de T'ieves Guild to investigate evil rumors bein' passed around about a company's practices. He's gotta know dat dere's some element of danger involved." Somehow the volume of this conversation had turned itself up to shouting, he realized, and with some effort calmed himself back down. "It ain' like T'eoren gonna just up and hire some green kid off de streets who ain' got two brain cells to rub toget'er to fulfill a guild contract for me."

The sneer plastered across Rogue's face at that comment looked rather painful. "Yer right, swamprat. Yer cousin ain't half as thoughtless as some of his younger relatives." That said Rogue swooped out of his office and slammed the door behind herself hard enough for a hairline crack to form along the frame.

* * *

Growing up as a child in a world rife with uncertainty, Bishop had found the ability to calm himself through routine. What might appear an obsession to some was merely a habit of trying to create order within the chaos of a life spun out of control. Food was eaten in a particular manner, clothes put on in a certain order, prayers always said at a set time; all of it had a reason and purpose. The soothing mantra calmed his frayed nerves when nothing else could. But of all his habitual routines, nothing enabled the same response as cleaning and oiling his weapons. Each piece had to be methodically removed and placed in just such a way to ensure that the whole would be reassembled correctly when the job was done. This was the equivalent of Bishop's 'me time', which was why the interruption begun with "Whatcher doin' Bub?" was more unwelcome than typical.

"Cleaning," he replied tersely, choosing to concentrate on the oily rag in his hands to avoid making eye contact with his sudden companion. He heard a snort from his left and glanced over to see the stocky intruder handling a piece of barrel, eyeing it dubiously. He forcefully willed himself not to clench the stock in his hands any harder than necessary and opened his lips just enough to squeeze out "you mind." He watched Logan shrug and toss the cylinder down onto the table top like a worthless broken toy.

Bishop watched it roll to a stop against a small bearing and stared, wondering if he should let it lie or realign it in its proper position with all of its compatriots. "Got a job fer ya." If it hadn't been so silent in the back shed where Bishop habitually broke down his weapons he might not have heard the statement. As it was he felt at a loss for exactly how to reply. Logan had made it a statement, not a request. This meant he wasn't entirely sure if he could refuse. Glancing again over his shoulder he merely lifted an eyebrow as an indication of his acknowledgement of the statement. Logan apparently took this as indication to have a seat on one of the wooden crates of ammunition lined up along the back wall and simply nodded back.

Realizing that nothing short of his full attention would convince the Wolverine to vacate _his_ domain, Bishop carefully replaced the small part he was handling and turned bodily toward Logan. "What 'job' is that?"

A feral grin appeared on Logan's face, "You n' me are taking a mini vacation, boss' orders."

Bishop leaned backward against the table and crossed his arms over his chest. "I see." He contemplated whether or not it was worth asking exactly what Logan's idea of a vacation was, then decided he may be better off not knowing what the deranged man considered to be fun.

"Ain'tcha curious where we're goin'?"

Bishop could see the vicious glint in Logan's eyes, but for the sake of simply having his shed to himself once again decided to humor him. "Where is it we are being sent?"

"Madripoor."

Now suddenly the wicked smile on Logan's face made perfect sense. "No." He stated, turning his back to Logan once again to resume his routine.

"Sorry kid, but you can't back out on this one. Gambit's sending you and me to dredge the local rumor mill." He heard Logan stand and felt himself pressing his fist down into the table top out of sheer aggravation. "We'll be leaving tomorrow, but don't worry." He heard the door behind him open, "you'll be back to see 'Ro again in just a couple days." With that the door slammed shut behind the Canadian. For a split second Bishop wondered if he should go after him and attempt to explain that there was nothing going on between himself and Storm. However, logically he also realized almost immediately that with Logan there was no explaining or reasoning, and attempt to do so would only cause Logan to believe that he was correct in the first place.

Madripoor. He entertained the thought for a brief moment, then shuddered. If there were any place on this planet right now that resembled the future of his birth it was Madripoor. Eventually it would, in his reality, become the Witness' base of operations. It was a city of criminals where the only valid currencies were: violence, drugs, alcohol and sex. What on earth Gambit could possibly have them fishing for in that tiny Asian city, Bishop wasn't even about to hazard a guess.

Instead, he returned to his guns and his cleaning. Even though all his routine preparations for the week were now null and void, the order in which he cleaned his guns would always remain the same. It was something he could always count on, even as the world around him seemed to crumble.


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Note: This is shorter than I intended, and yes though it doesn't seem it, the plot is winding its way to a close. There are some important elements that I'm trying to really string together into a woven masterpiece without loose threads ruining the look of the finished product. Remember, patience is indeed a virtue. :) Also, this chapter holds my first TRUE attempt at an action scene. I've never done one before and felt the need to truly talent my internal movie theater so that I could try and get the whole thing JUST right. While I'm sure it is not to my exacting standards, I hope that it also is not weak and lifeless, since out of necessity there will be plenty more. That all being said, enjoy.

* * *

The world could be crumbling around them and in the end it didn't matter one bit to the electric company. Remy wondered momentarily if he could somehow argue with the utility companies that they, in all actuality, probably owed the team thanks for their very existence, which he would gladly accept in the form of waivers. He snorted audibly at the imagined awkwardness of that conversation.

Leaning back on both his arms, the Cajun stretched his lower back muscles allowing his gaze to travel past the stack of bills piled next to him on the floor to the windows along the far wall of his rooms. Autumn sunshine weakly shone through the glass, gilding the oak floors with its teasing fingertips and he fantasized about climbing out those windows up to the safety of the roof. The one place that years ago a person could almost guarantee to find a sulking wayward Remy LeBeau was now the one place that he could not seem to find the time for.

Muscles temporarily loosened, he pulled himself to a stand and dodged checkbooks and ledgers in a cautious dance until he had grasped the handle of the nearest window and inhaling deeply, pulled it up. A chill blast assaulted him, raising the skin under his worn T-shirt as an unconscious protest and he shut the window as quickly as he had opened it, settling for simply banging his forehead against the cool glass in a gentle rhythm.

"Never did I hope to see the day that Remy LeBeau became a prisoner." The voice caused him to jump away from the promise of freedom that shone through double paned glass instinctively before his mind could register the owner's identity.

"Eh, ain' no prisoner me, Stormy." Gambit shrugged and leaned nonchalantly against the wall, attempting to mask his frustrations from moments before. "Jus' doin' what needs to be done's all."

Without a word, Storm strode over toward him and grasped his chin in one hand, examining him like a mother would her child. She yanked his face down so that they stood directly eye to eye, barely a breath apart. Had it been any other femme, Remy would've sworn it was an attempt at seduction, not deduction. "You are not happy. You are restless." It was stated as firmly as if she had said the sky was blue. She released his face and leaned back, allowing him a trifle of personal space. He shifted out of her reach, about to respond, but Storm stopped him, placing a hand solidly on his chest. "Do not lie to me, Remy. I know you too well to believe anything you are about to say." She smiled faintly, turning the accusation into a jest.

He smiled back and settled more of his weight against the wall. "S'true."

"What is true?" Storm stepped back further, tracing his frame with her gaze slowly.

Pushing off the wall, Gambit returned to his piles of papers on the floor, neatly avoiding making contact or meeting Storm's measuring gaze. "All o' it I guess, _chere_." He flipped open another check book and grabbed another sheet of paper off the top of the pile. "I doin' what I gotta do t' keep eveyt'ing runnin'. I ain' happy bout it. I am restless. An' I do feel like a prisoner to dese damn bills." The more he spoke, the more he realized how miserable he truly was becoming. This realization only made Remy feel more desperate to escape and more miserable about the fact that he could not. The responsibilities of leading the team had become his own damned albatross that he could not and would not shake. The weight of the hand that settled lightly on his shoulder barely registered past the tension that he could not work out of his shoulders.

"Oh Remy." Arms encircled him from behind and he felt a chin come to rest on his shoulder. "You really are out of your element, aren't you?"

"T'ieves ain' accountants, _chere_."

Storm's laugh was like tinkling bells in his ears. "No, they are not." She reached over his shoulder and deftly removed the bill from his motionless in his hands. "Neither are leaders." She whispered ever so softly in his ear.

He turned and caught a ghost of a smile gracing her lips and watched her slowly wink one icy blue eye. The only thing he could offer was a confused gaze in return.

"Remy." Storm stated sternly, moving from behind him so that she stood fully in his view. She crossed her arms over her chest sternly. "Who in this mansion _is_ an accountant?"

He felt his eyebrows crease together in confusion, looking at her blankly. "Yah mean, Cyke didn't balance de checkbook…."

"I highly doubt he was ever aware of how much money was actually in the accounts." He continued to stare at her, for once unsure of how to proceed. An exasperated huff, that was so utterly un-Stormlike that it almost made him uneasy saved him from having to construct a response. "If you ask, nicely, I am fairly sure that Robert would gladly accept his job of balancing the school books back. He was rather chagrined that you had taken it away from him to begin with, albeit innocently unknowningly." She smirked and nearly laughed at the shock he was certain was painted all over his face. "There are two words I would have never guessed would apply so appropriately to our resident Master Thief."

Staring momentarily at the water bill that graced the top of the nearest pile, Remy ignored the jest and threw the bill up in the air to allow it to flutter down somewhere amid the heap of paperwork he had surrounded himself with. "Why didn' he say anyt'ing sooner?"

"When have you ever known Bobby to volunteer for anything if he didn't have to?"

Uncoiling quickly, Remy rose to stand eye to eye with his long time best friend. "Why didn' _you_ say anyt'ing sooner?" He asked, glaring playfully at his long time friend, jabbing her solidly in the shoulder with a single index finger.

He watched Storm sigh and turn her eyes back down to the floor briefly before again meeting his gaze. "Because you, my friend, have a talent for making it look like you have everything under control. And in my own selfishness I yearned to believe it so. There had been so much upheaval, change….loss." Her eyes begged an unspoken forgiveness of him that he knew he would grant her in a heartbeat. "Since it seemed you were in control of everything, I was perfectly willing to believe it was so." She gently grasped his left hand in her own two. "I am sorry that I let you bear this burden alone for this long, my friend."

Slowly Remy wrapped her in his arms and squeezed, feeling Storm's own muscles relax under his grip. "Y'know I could never get mad at you fer somet'in silly like dis Storm. Y' gotta remember, dis 'Master T'ief' only knows how ta do t'ings de way he been taught."

A smile had returned to Storm's face. "I had not realized until very recently how similar the way you were running the X-Men was to the way that you had run the Guild." Silently she shook her head. "Had I paid more attention I would have realized sooner how much you were running yourself into the ground. I believe all of us are to blame."

"No blamin', Stormy. Jus' fixin' an' movin' on's all." He turned back and began gathering up all the bills and books and other paraphernalia from the floor. He had just grabbed the last checkbook when a thunder clap startled him into dropping a good portion of it. "What in de hell was dat for?" He laughed, turning back to see Storm retreating out of his doorway.

"I have told you time and again, do _not_ call me that."

Chuckling he regained control of all the various and sundry bills and made his way to the door only to find a sticky note hanging from the jamb: "Oh and Remy," it read, "Hank would appreciate if you would forward all the individual read outs from Danger Room sessions to him so that they can be filed correctly. Kitty has expressed concerns that you have not been sending her the computer system upgrade reports to process. I have taken the liberty of setting Cerebro to forward all team performance reports to my e-mail. Lastly, please allow Bishop to manage the security system readouts and updates, he has been getting very hard to live with. Peace, Ororo."

"Peace indeed Stormy, looks like I might just be gettin' some peace an' quiet after all." A truly genuine smile gracing his lips, Remy LeBeau went off in search of some of his team members to inform them that their off duty tasks (that he had been woefully unaware of) were officially assigned back to them. Maybe, just maybe, leadership wasn't so bad after all.

* * *

The saying supposedly went along the lines that "misery loves having company around," or something to that effect. Whoever penned that line, in her personal opinion, should be shot. Especially if the author had anything to do with encouraging this particular pathetic bookworm of a mutant to follow her around like an untrained security detail. Frustration was knowing that she couldn't simply garrote the loser and be rid of him. Instead she was forced to at least play 'nice nice' so that she didn't find herself in a worse predicament, a la her Neanderthal of an ex-lover, than the current status quo. Brief thoughts of the torment Creed went through with that chip lodged in his brain during his final days enabled her to clench her teeth into a painful expression that only those who knew her well could translate as a smile.

Even though he didn't know her well, or hardly at all, the bared teeth did nothing to dissuade Ricochet from tailing her along the edges of the mansion lawns. The pressure within her entire system continued to build as the annoyance became overwhelming. Slowing her steps just enough that she allowed him to gain ground, Mystique stepped and instantly shifted her balance as easily as she typically did her shape, coming around with a round house kick aimed directly for his head. It was the only way she knew to tell him that she had had enough.

Mere millimeters from connecting, she watched him duck and roll to avoid the impact to his jaw. However, unlike what her assassin training would have had her do, he rolled wide to avoid her. Blood pumped through her body, making her limbs and soul sing for the first time in months. There would be blood today, finally! Using the momentum from the roundhouse she planted her foot and sprung before he had fully regained his footing.

Instantly she sensed more than saw the handful of gravel released from his hand. More beast than human, Mystique twisted herself mid air to avoid taking the flying shrapnel to the face, stretching herself out feet together in the lead in anticipation of using her speed and body weight to crush his sternum.

In what appeared to be a last ditch effort on his part, Nick leaned to the left and darted his right arm out, successfully grabbing hold of her ankle. She felt him pull her down, her momentum at that point working against her, his action forced her into a spin, nose diving into the now hardened earth. He leaned over her prone form and she lunged up for his throat, grabbing hold of soft tissue and laryngeal cartilage in a pincer grasp of brilliant death.

He swung out, landing two blows to her nose before forcing her to let go simply by grabbing her around the throat in a mirrored grasp and pulling her away from him. His arms were simply longer than hers. Mystique felt a tingle run through her trunk and felt it come bubbling out of her swiftly closing airway, distantly she recognized her own laughter over the pounding of her pulse in her ears.

Bringing a leg up she connected solidly with his jaw, which emitted a wet pop on impact, indicating dislocation or fracture. If she were having a good day possibly both, she thought idly. Right foot resting on his shoulder she began buffeting the side of his head with her steel boots, making contact with his left ear at least five times. Still she felt the grip around her throat. Pulling back the leg one more time, she feinted and lashed out with the left instead, connecting with his genitals in a solid crippling blow.

Almost simultaneously she felt herself inhale as her body crashed to the ground, now released from where he had held her, hanging mid air. Regaining her footing in seconds, Mystique toed Ricochet's body over to one side and lifted her left foot one last time, allowing the thin solid line of her stiletto heel to hover directly above his left eye. "You," she stated, lowering the point until she knew he felt moderate discomfort not yet bordering on pain. "You are obnoxious. You've done nothing but hover and pester me since you arrived here. What game are you looking to play boy?"

Watching his expression, Mystique noticed the instant and unmistakable change in the fire behind his one still open eye. It was something she recognized from a lifetime of viewing her own reflection in the mirror. This _boy_ on the ground below her was no boy, and most certainly was no X-Man. Curiosity and an eager, almost impulsive urge to brew chaos among the mansion's inhabitants burst to life, engulfing her very soul for a moment in a bonfire of greed and insanity. Though still silent on the ground, Mystique removed her foot and hauled him to stand before her. "You will tell me."

Rather than the defiant stare or shameless explanation that she expected, Ricochet looked at her and _laughed_. There was a moment of blind red fury, that only years of experience caging her own inner lunatic enabled her to get past. Without a word, Mystique locked gazes with him, and reached for her hip holster. Silently she raised the weapon, one arm still supporting the majority of his body weight. Using her teeth, Mystique pulled back on the action of her custom .22 and chambered round, then leveled the muzzle directly between his eyebrows.

She grudgingly gave him credit for not flinching as the titanium barrel pressed firmly into his flesh. He seemed almost to consider what to tell her for a moment before opening his mouth and using his swollen, and apparently broken after all, jaw to the best of his ability. He quietly stated, "wheh you ah eddy to no, ah'll thell you." (When you are ready to know, I'll tell you.)

"Bull shit," she spat at him. "Who the fuck do you think you're dealing with punk?"

The smile that he managed to produce looked painful, and Mystique relished in it. "Noh yeh, uh thoon. Thoon youw ee eddy. Ith ahwoth thie."(Not yet, but soon. Soon you'll be ready. It's almost time.)


End file.
